The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast

This episode is all about the games that hit players with emotional gut punches. You get 50 minutes of nice preamble with returning guest, indie developer Lucy Blundell, then 1 hour+ of our combined 15 top emotional moments in games.

After the 50-minute mark, this episode features spoilers (some light, some heavy) for these games: Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Final Fantasy X, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Final Fantasy VII (and the remakes), Botany Manor, Ori and the Blind Forest (just the intro), The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings...

Cassette Beasts developer and all-round great video game thinker Jay Baylis joins us once again! In time for the release of Metroid Prime 4, Matthew and Jay each share their top 5 games in Nintendo's series.

This is the Critical Hit article Jay mentioned on Metroid's possible influences. This week's music is from the Metroid: Zero Mission soundtrack by Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano.

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The podcast eats itself! The Back Page finally dedicates a whole episode to its namesake. How do back page jokes go wrong? And what about the less frequent times when they go well? Returning guest Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer, helps us examine the creation of these gags. There's also a 20-minute bit on ARC Raiders near the start if that's your sort of thing.

This week's music is from the Yakuza 0 soundtrack by Hidenori Shoji. 

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The drafts return! Four giant men compete to pick the best games on the Mega Drive (or Genesis, if you're American), SNES and Neo Geo across 8 categories – plus a 9th bonus category specifically for the Amiga.

This week's music is from the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro and the Chrono Trigger soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda (not Rick Astley). 

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This week's guest is Matt Leone, former Special Projects Editor at Polygon. Hear all about his new website Design Room, and his work on the oral history of Final Fantasy VII and and Shadow of the Colossus.

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A deep dive into an all-time classic on Wii. We'll do this again on Monday for Super Mario Galaxy 2, exclusively for Patreon XL Tier members!

This week's music is from the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack by Koji Kondo and Mahito Yokota.

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Games discussed: Dispatch, Absolum, The Séance of Blake Manor, Ninja Gaiden 4, Hell is Us.

Then, Samuel butchering a bunch of Zelda quiz questions. It has to be heard to be believed.

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A deep dive on the demos we tried during Steam Next Fest, hopefully giving you a few things for your wishlist consideration.

Samuel's games: Reanimal, Birdcage, Lumines Arise, The Killing Stone, Evil Egg, Skate Story, Ambrosia Sky, Cairn.

Matthew's games: CiniCross, No More Work For Ito, Opus: Prism Peak, The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, The Seance of Blake Manor.

We won't list the duds, but one was Bubsy 4D.

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Following our moderately good episode about games set in Britain earlier this year, we assemble a list of the 10 key games set in Japan. Did we get it wrong? Probably. Plus: a mini 'What We've Been Playing' episode about two recent download games we've been digging!

This week's music is from the Persona 4 soundtrack by Shoji Meguro. 

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Matthew has Covid! Poor chap. At least he got through all six seasons of Justified while recovering. Here are the games discussed this week: Silent Hill f, Ghost of Yotei, Baby Steps, No, I am not a human, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the latest Golden Idol DLC.

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Music podcaster and former games journalist Jon Denton is our guest this week! Hear about Jon's journey from gamesTM to being pals with The Weeknd.

This week's music is from the Super Mario World soundtrack by Koji Kondo. 

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A massive year for games, a bleak year for at least one giant man. One of our oldest and most popular podcast formats is back, more than two years after our 2016 episode!

This week's music is from the Yakuza 0 soundtrack by Kensuke Inage and Yoshihiro Arai.

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It's another mailbag. Topics discussed: Mr Kipling's Angel Slices, why Tomb Raider keeps needing reboots, Nintendo's struggles on the GameCube, Steve Martin and matching sandwiches to video games. 

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If you enjoy this episode, consider supporting us so we can make more Two Giant Men episodes just like it!

As voted for by the listeners, we revisit Rockstar Vancouver's 2006 ode to high school life – as well as our own cursed teenage years.

This week's music is from the amazing Bully soundtrack by Shawn Lee, which we neglected to talk about in the episode. Thanks to Michael 'BanyaBat' for the edits.

These are the two articles mentioned in the episode – Samuel Horti's Bully piece and Game Informer's Bully 2 piece.

H...

The stack of games we've been chewing through lately, plus our reactions to the 007 First Light footage released this week.

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Our quarterly four-person draft is here! The Two Giant Men are joined by two further giant men as we compete to pick the best 11 games from some of our favourite Japanese game developers. To mix things up, expect a couple of twists on the usual draft format...

This week's music is from the Street Fighter 2 soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura and Isao Abe.

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The Back Page's road to GTA 6 – a borderline-unviable series of playthroughs of older GTA games – continues! You don't need to have revisited San Andreas to enjoy this episode. We give you a nice overview of everything going on in the story and missions. We dig deep into the game's early '90s Californian setting, the ways it pushed the GTA mission formula forwards, and why its Definitive Edition solves many of the original PS2 version's problems.

This week's music is the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas main theme by Michael Hunter.

A few show...

With 750 Metacritic 'points' each, who can pick the best 10 games based on their critical averages? A panel of judges will decide, and we'll talk about who won in a future episode! Let us know what you think of this episode format in the comments. It resulted in at least one incredibly wild choice...

This week's music is from the Binary Domain soundtrack by Hidenori Shoji and Mitsuharu Fukuyama.

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More pre-owned game purchases go on trial in Judge Castle's Games Court. It's a fun one! We welcome more entries for future Games Court episodes, if you have them, at backpagegames@gmail.com.

This week's music is the Games Court theme by listener Adam Saucier. Cheers for your fine work!

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Matthew is away, lying in a hot tub in Scotland somewhere! So, this week Samuel is paired up with his former gamesTM colleague and draft menace Dave Scarborough. You get 45 minutes of magazine memories, then around 80 minutes on the history of Ghostbusters in games (spoiler alert: many of them are rubbish).

Apologies for the slight headphone bleed you'll hear in this episode – our audio engineer, Matthew Castle, is away this week as mentioned (AKA the 'Samuel did his best' excuse).

This week's music is from the Ghostbusters for Master System soundtrack by Tohru Na...

The main event of the Switch 2's post-launch period is here. But does it have the juice, the sauce or the gravy?

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Former gamesTM features editor Matt Handrahan is our guest this week. Having spent a decade working on GamesIndustry.biz, he's now Portfolio Director at Kepler Interactive.

The most recent game he worked on? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which you might have heard of. This episode, though, gets into the far more important business of discussing the price of pints in Bournemouth's Sixty Million Postcards pub circa 2007.

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A delightfully unusual episode with a guest we like a lot. Matthew Castle lore fans are in for a treat.

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Matthew is fetching koalas for Chvrches in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, while Samuel is having year 11 lunchtime PTSD in Sloclap's football game Rematch. It's another WWBP episode!

Games discussed: Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Rematch, Date Everything, MindsEye, Pipstrello and the Cursed Yoyo, Helldivers 2

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Finally, after a belated PS5 release, we dive deep into MachineGames' 2024 GOTY contender Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The first half is spoiler-free, then the second half goes deeper into the story with some fun bonus nonsense to boot (wait until you hear Matthew's pitch for The Fugitive tie-in game).

This week's music is from the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle soundtrack by Gordy Haab. 

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It's a bloody mailbag! Please save your shrugs for the end. Thanks for all the questions, as ever.

This week's music is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack by Perturbator. 

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A new Nintendo console is here. Matthew is truly submerged in the Switch 2 experience, while Samuel has merely dipped a toe in the water. Here's how we're finding it so far.

This week's music is from the Mario Kart World soundtrack by Atsuko Asahi, Maasa Miyoshi, Takuhiro Honda and Yutaro Takakuwa.

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It's Matthew hosting the pod solo this week, and his guest is Geraint Evans, formerly of N64 magazine, NGC and Gamesmaster. These days, he's working at the publisher PQube.

This week's music is from the Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 + 2 soundtracks by Hideaki Kobayashi and Fumie Kumatani. 

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Matthew has almost finished the new Doom game, while Samuel has done about half of it – so that's the focus of this week's episode. Matthew also explains his appreciation of the new MercurySteam game, Blades of Fire, and digs deep into his never-ending playthrough of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy on Switch.

This week's music is from The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy soundtrack by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda.

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57 minutes and 13 seconds – that's the timestamp you want for all the game chatter, including two top 10 lists of the best games of 2005. Skip all the bullshit!

For everyone else? Enjoy tales of college woes and secret freezer politics. Nonsense podcasting awaits.

This week's music is from the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams.

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Our guest cancelled! Gah. Well, here's an episode we airlifted out of our collective asses. Hopefully it's not too bad with two days' notice to plan it.

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20ish listeners' pre-owned purchases go on trial before Judge Castle, as Games Court returns!

We also talk about this week's GTA 6 trailer, with a brief section on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, too. Do get in touch if you have any future Games Court entries, and we'll keep making them.

This week's music is from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 by Lorien Testard.

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It's time for another round of listener questions as we each recover from the 50 hours of games we played for last week's episode.

Did anyone need 100 minutes of mailbag questions? Probably not, but as ever: it happened.

Note: we recorded this week's episode before the Polygon and Giant Bomb layoffs if the tone around the games media chatter seems off.

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It's catch-up time, as a spring wave of fantastic games hit at once! All of the above, plus Bionic Bay and some Metroid series chatter. 

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Much to the chagrin of Matthew, who had to edit it, the four-person draft is back! This time, Samuel, Matthew, Ashley Day and Dave Scarborough are fighting over the best games on Xbox 360 (note: some of them may not be the best, but that's for you to decide).

This week's music is from the Fable 2 soundtrack by Danny Elfman and Russell Shaw, plus the the Bayonetta soundtrack by Helena Noguerra, Bart Howard, as well as Norihiko Hibino, Takahiro Izutani, Masami Ueda, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Rei Kondoh, Takayasu Sodeoka, Erina Niwa, Yoshitaka Suzuki and Naoto Tanaka.

...

Later than usual, but hopefully worth it: Matthew plays all the Nintendo Switch 2 demos (except some ports no one cares about). 

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Here are our thoughts on the new Nintendo console so far.

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After 30 minutes of chatter about Rebellion's new Game Pass survival game Atomfall, we try to pick the 10 games that best represent Britain as a virtual setting. Finally, we cap things off with a low-nutrition awards ceremony of British 'stuff' in computer games past and present.

This week's music is from the GoldenEye 007 soundtrack by Graeme Norgate, Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland.

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Matthew has played 20+ hours of Assassin's Creed for this episode, while Samuel turned it off after three and played Avowed instead. It's another 'what we've been playing' extravaganza!

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Who can pick the best 10 games on the Nintendo Switch? Eurogamer's Katharine Castle joins us to help figure this out, and to celebrate the hybrid console's healthy lifespan in our latest draft episode. Vote for the winner in our Discord's announcement channel.

This week's music is from the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe soundtrack by Shiho Fujii, Atsuko Asahi, Ryo Nagamatsu, Yasuaki Iwata and Kenta Nagata.

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We answer a heap more of your questions, including a really daft one about HP sauce on a pizza. Thanks for sending them in!

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Matthew finished Monster Hunter Wilds! Samuel didn't. This week we're joined by returning guest Joe Skrebels to discuss the newest game in Capcom's idiosyncratic series, as well as its meteoric rise in the West over the past decade plus. 

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This week's guest is Dave Jewitt, formerly of GameSpot's brilliant Firearms Expert Reacts series, and newly of the channel EXP. He joins us to talk about how this great series of videos came to be...and ends by sharing his favourite 10 Warhammer video games (to the 15 sickos who kept asking for this, please enjoy). Find them at Patreon.com/watchEXP if you'd like to support the work of Dave and his collaborators, Chris and Adam.

This week's music is from the Warhammer 40,000: Darktide soundtrack by Jesper Kyd.

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We rewind the clock to 2004, and discuss some of the most important and influential games ever made (plus the demo of Mashed) across two top 10 lists.

This week's music is from the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack by Michael Hunter, and the Final Fantasy X-2 soundtrack by Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi. 

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Bestselling crime fiction author Tim Weaver is our guest this week. Of course, long-time print readers will know him best for his work on the magazines N64 and NGC! This is a Matthew-only episode, as the pair have known each other for years. Enjoy our deepest dive into '90s games mags yet.

This week's music is from the Mario Kart 64 soundtrack by Kenta Nagata.

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Our first 'now playing' episode of the year covers Dynasty Warriors: Origins, The Roottrees Are Dead, Neva, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Marvel Rivals and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2.

This week's music is from the Dynasty Warriors: Origins soundtrack by Masato Koike.

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Outside Xbox's Mike Channell joins us this week to discuss his journey from magazines like PC Format and OXM to being very well-known on the internet. Plus, in the second part, hear about Mike's more recent hobby of acquiring and maintaining old arcade machines!

This week's music is from the Daytona USA soundtrack by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi.

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The PlayStation 2 is arguably the greatest video games console of all time. Over 44 competing picks for the system's best games, Matthew, Samuel and two other Giant Men – Dave Scarborough and Ashley Day – will prove why. Vote for the winner in the announcements channel of the Back Page Discord.

This week's music is from the Katamari Damacy soundtrack by Yuu Miyake, Asuka Sakai, Akitaka Tohyama, Hideki Tobeta, Yoshihito Yano and Yuri Misumi, as well as the Gitaroo Man soundtrack by COIL, Tomohiro Harada and YUAN.

Find the full list of picks at Patreon.com/back...

Games Court is back! 23 listeners' pre-owned purchases go on trial in front of Judge Castle. Only the pathetic attorney Samuel Roberts can save them (or help send them to their deaths).

This one is strong in the first half, drags for its third quarter, but brings the energy back for the final part. A net gain, for our great podcast!

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One hour of totally unfounded waffle and pointless commentary.

This week's music is from the Super Mario Odyssey soundtrack by Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii and Koji Kondo.

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Two top 10 lists of our favourite games from 2024.

This week's music is from the Balatro soundtrack by LouisF.

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Silly awards from silly men, ahead of the real GOTY pod next week. Thanks to this year's guests, too, for providing insights on their favourite games of 2024.

This week's music is from the FF7 Rebirth soundtrack by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu and the Helldivers 2 soundtrack by Wilbert Roget II.

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Each host must pick the best 10 games that have a score of 79 or less on Metacritic! But who will win out with that tricky criteria in mind? And what gold (if any) lies within the amber ranks of the reviews aggregator? Vote for the winning selection in the Discord announcements channel for the next week.

Some rules that might be handy to know:

The quiz part goes on for far too long. The mailbag bit has some low energy answers. But: it is an episode of this podcast.

This week's music is from the No More Heroes soundtrack by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda.

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Our favourite first and third party games on every PlayStation console, just in time for its 30th anniversary.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura.

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In part one, hear us discuss what it's like to work on a games magazine when it's closing down, the rise of prestige games mags, and why crowdfunded independent media is so hard to get off the ground.

A Profound Waste of Time founder Caspian Whistler joins us for part two. Hear about the creation of this successful prestige print project – and check out APWOT issue 5's Kickstarter here, which ends in a couple of weeks.

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Beefy games chat this week on all of the above – plus The Rise of the Golden Idol, FF7 Rebirth and Apex Legends.

Thanks to Matthew 'Big Matty C' Castle for the edits this week.

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We all have too many games to play. One of our favourite guests, Jay Baylis, joins us to discuss how we all gathered massive backlogs – and what can be done to cure it.

Matthew had a cold for this one. But he still went through and edited out all his coughs, bless him. 

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Only Jeremy Peel can save The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast.

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We need an extra week to work on episode 200, so enjoy this great episode we made for our wonderful Patreon subscribers earlier this year.

Support us at Patreon.com/BackPagePod, and get more great episodes like this one.

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One of our favourite returning guests, Louise Blain (last on the pod in October 2021), discusses her current role as Creative Lead at Blumhouse Games. Their first published game, Fear the Spotlight, is out on October 22nd.

It's short but sweet! But next week probably won't be...

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Matthew is zagging on the new Atlus RPG, is surprised at how much he's enjoying Silent Hill 2, and is at odds with Samuel on the merits of the newest Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom.

You'll laugh when you get to our predictions of the critical response to Metaphor...

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Returning guest Dave Scarborough (who?) joins us for our next three-person draft, focused on the PlayStation 4. Vote for the winner in our pinned tweet.

This week's music is from the Persona 5: Royal soundtrack by Shoji Meguro. Thank you to Matthew 'Mr Basil Pesto' Castle for the edits.

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A true mix of stuff this week, right up until the final minutes: UFO 50, Astro Bot (this time with spoiler chat), Tactical Breach Wizards, Peglin, Marvel Vs Capcom: Fighting Collection and Sumerian Six. Enjoy!

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The draft is back, this time with unofficial third host and PC gaming expert Jeremy Peel! Listen to 30 competitive picks from an amazing decade for PC gaming, then vote on the winner in our pinned Twitter poll @BackPagePod.

This week's music is from the VVVVVV soundtrack by Magnus Pålsson.

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So many good games to discuss this week! Astro Bot, Space Marine 2, Star Wars: Outlaws and the new Famicom Detective Club game. An array of treats, right up until the last few minutes of the episode...

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Cassette Beasts dev Jay Baylis returns to discuss how Japanese games have been perceived and discussed in the West since the 360 era.

This week's music is from the Persona 3 soundtrack by Shoji Meguro.

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In this oddly lengthy grab bag of an episode, Matthew talks about the first few hours of Star Wars Outlaws (about 25 mins in), Samuel explains what he ate at Gamescom 2024, and both of us answer questions from the listeners. 

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With Andy Kelly's book on Alien: Isolation out this month, we grilled him on the game and his hottest Alien movie takes.

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Is Astro Bot out yet? No? What about Star Wars: Outlaws and Space Marine 2? Not right now? Still? Fine.

Then here's what we've spent our respective summers playing: an array of indie/double-A games ranging from disappointing to good. These include Anger Foot, Nobody Wants To Die, Another Code: Recollection, Thank Goodness You're Here and Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. Plus, hear Matthew talk about the HD redo of the Ace Attorney Investigations games and Samuel ramble about Apex Legends nonsense (yet again)! 

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Here's the final part of our Nintendo top 50 list. Find the full list to read at your leisure on Patreon.com/backpagepod!

This week's music is once again the Wii Shop Channel theme by Kazumi Totaka.

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The Godfather Part II of podcasts is here! In this episode, we fire through every major Nintendo series and compile a longlist of games to populate our top 50 first-party list.

Tune in next week for the third and final part – The Godfather Part III of podcasts, perhaps, where we'll arrange the top 50 on air. Does this mean that Sofia Coppola is Wario? Possibly.

This week's music is from the Last Window: The Secret of Cape West soundtrack by Satoshi Okubo.

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Part one of our three-part effort to create a Nintendo top 50 list is here! This episode explores the process of making list features when you're working on a magazine or website, and the compromises and decisions that lead to the final result.

Then, in the second half of the episode, we revisit the top 100 first-party Nintendo games from the final issue of ONM back in 2014, where Matthew explains the choices made. This sets the stage for what comes next...

Look out for parts two and three across the next couple of weeks. 

From great Metroidvanias to an impromptu Cheese Draft, it's time for another mailbag episode. 

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Our guest this week is wrestler, video personality, consultant and all-round good guy Simon Miller! Simon discusses his days running NRevolution magazine alone, working on X360 Magazine with Samuel, creating The Miller Report at VideoGamer and watching THQ burn from the inside in the early 2010s. It's quite a career!

This week's music is from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past soundtrack by Koji Kondo.

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Whoever wins, you lose! Vote for the winner in the Back Page Announcements channel.

This week's music is from the Bayonetta soundtrack by Norihiko Hibino, Takahiro Izutani, Masami Ueda, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Rei Kondoh, Takayasu Sodeoka, Erina Niwa, Yoshitaka Suzuki and Naoto Tanaka.

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Here's what we've been playing lately, featuring Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Still Wakes The Deep, Mullet Madjack, a little on Crow Country, and a bit on Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance.

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The worst format in podcasting is back! For the first time since 2021, Samuel runs his pre-owned purchases past Judge Castle.

This week's music is from The World Ends With You soundtrack by Takeharu Ishimoto.

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With a hangover from 90 June livestreams, Matthew and Samuel each deliver their 10 favourites from the hype season.

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Matthew gets a well-deserved week off! Samuel's former colleague, Retro Gamer editor Darran Jones, steps into the draft dojo to celebrate Sony's first gaming handheld device. You get about 30 minutes of Darran talking about his career, then an hour of background preamble on the PSP, followed by 90 minutes of draft. Apologies in advance for the length, but hopefully it's a good listen! Vote for the winner @backpagepod on Twitter.

This week's music is from the LocoRoco soundtrack by Nobuyuki Shimizu and Kemmei Adachi. 

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US games media royalty James Mielke (EGM, 1Up, GMR) is our guest this week. Hear about James' journey from comic book artist during Marvel's bankruptcy to becoming a key editor on a host of important media outlets throughout the '00s. Bonus: this episode contains another excellent Hideo Kojima interview anecdote.

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We each try and guess five mystery games based on snippets from their reviews in '00s games magazines. Feel free to play along! After that, enjoy our considered answers to a whole heap of questions, from the Nintendo Switch 2 to the ideal game based on Thunderbirds. 

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Two Giant Men, 20 categories, dubious rules! Time for another draft episode, this time on the subject of video game soundtracks. Vote for the winner in the announcements channel of the Discord.

Most of the music used in the episode is credited in real-time, but the track in the break is an orchestral Phoenix Wright arrangement by Noriyuki Iwadare.

Here are the categories we select from:

Album Categories

1. RPG

2. Indie game

3. Shooter (FPS or otherwise)

4. Platformer

5. Game soundtrack where music plays a key role...

Here's what we've been playing lately: Stellar Blade, Animal Well, Octopath Traveler 2, Dark Forces Remaster and Pepper Grinder.

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Matthew speaks to one of his favourite authors, Stuart Turton. Hear about his exhausting creative process (seriously, you won't believe it), and what it takes to write a novel – including his latest, The Last Murder at the End of the World. Then, in part two, hear more about Stu's love of video games, which runs incredibly deep.

Samuel is away for this one. Matthew gets the name of the podcast slightly wrong at the start, but don't hold it against him.

This week's music is from the Return of the Obra Dinn soundtrack by...

This week's guest is IGN Managing Editor Rachel Weber, who probably has the most varied and fascinating career in games media of anyone who's appeared on the podcast so far. Hear about her transatlantic journey from OPM during the PS3 launch days to GamesIndustry.biz, Rolling Stone's Glixel channel and GamesRadar, before she landed at IGN.

This week's music is from the Lost: Via Domus soundtrack by Michael Giacchino.

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27 listeners' game purchases go on trial before the morally dubious Judge Castle. Can the defendants' even more compromised lawyer, Samuel Roberts, get them off (not in that way)? The worst format in British podcasting returns.

This week's music is 'PIMP' by Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, as well as the Games Court theme by listener Adam Saucier.

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Two top 10 lists of the best games of 2003, and loads of bullshit about Matthew's mini-fridge and Samuel's week of work experience in the fire brigade. The games chat starts at 1 hour and 27 minutes if you'd just like the lists without the nonsense.

This week's music is from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker soundtrack by Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi and Koji Kondo. 

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What we've been playing lately, featuring Dragon's Dogma 2, Rise of the Ronin and Helldivers 2, as well as some old Command and Conquer nonsense and listener questions.

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Former PC Gamer Senior Reporter Steven Messner is our guest this week! Hear about his epic reports of goings on in EVE Online and other MMOs – and that time the bastard Samuel Roberts betrayed him.

This week's music is from the Harvest Moon 64 soundtrack by Tsuyoshi Tanaka.

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We needed a sudden week off! Enjoy this 2022 episode on the best 7/10 games, the result of our amazing Patreon support.

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Matthew played 70 hours of FF7 Rebirth, while Samuel played a measly 14 hours. How's it going so far? Expect mostly spoiler-free chat in this episode – we explain how we approached spoilers right at the start to put your mind at ease.

This week's music is from the FF7 Rebirth soundtrack by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu.

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This week's guest is former Edge editor Alex Wiltshire. Hear about his era of the magazine, as well as his time working at Hello Games and Mojang.

This week's music is from the New Super Mario Bros soundtrack by Asuka Hayazaki, Hajime Wakai and Koji Kondo.

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Matthew has finally become a big FF7 head, ploughing through Remake in January and now being 50 hours deep into Rebirth. Hear his (spoiler-free) thoughts on the newer game in this episode. Plus! Samuel plays Balatro and the Tomb Raider remaster, while Matthew also squeezes some Helldivers 2 into this episode.

This week's music is from the FF7 Rebirth soundtrack by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu.

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Time for our first draft episode of 2024! It's the turn of the PlayStation, one of the most important consoles in history. Listen to the episode, then vote on who picked the best 10 games in the pinned tweet @BackPagePod on Twitter.

This week's music is from the R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 soundtrack by Kohta Takahashi, Hiroshi Okubo and Asuka Sakai, plus the Tekken 3 soundtrack by Nobuyoshi Sano and Keiichi Okabe.

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After some dense episodes, allow us this brief respite to answer a slew of listener questions. Who should play Link in the Zelda movie? Which song would we sing for Hideo Kojima during karaoke? What happened to the mythical 'boys across the river'? Learn all this, and more.

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Beloved guest Jeremy Peel drops by to discuss his new Patreon project, The Peel Perspective, as well as the art of writing a magazine or website feature about video games. 

Did we nail this episode? Ack, not *quite*. As Matthew put it after the edit, it's fine. We didn't entirely have the right energy for it this week, nor did we have a tight enough plan to conquer such a big subject in the second half. Always lovely to have Jeremy back on, though. 

This week's music is from the System Shock remake by...

Two top 10 lists of our favourite games from 2002 (based on UK releases)...and a slew of ridiculous anecdotes about working in Homebase and studying GCSE Drama. 

This week's music is from the Super Mario Sunshine soundtrack by Koji Kondo and Shinobu Tanaka, and the Ico soundtrack by Michiru Oshima, Koichi Yamazaki and Mitsukuni Murayama.

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Returning guest Ashley Day tells us about his love of the Sega Saturn, then gives us his ten favourite Sega developed (or published) games of all time. Spoiler alert: Football Manager 2009 doesn't make the cut.

This week's music is from the Shining Force 3 soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba.

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We've been playing The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Marvel's Midnight Suns, Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (just the demo, mind), Assassin's Creed Nexus and Foamstars in this far-reaching episode. Some nutritious games waffle to cancel out last week's nonsense mailbag episode.

Enjoy!

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