From Pog to Tickle-Me Elmo, many 90s sensations proved to be short-lived fads, but 25 years on Pokemon still has more than a few diehards, to say the least. Angela (Fire type), Robert (Fighting type), and Zack (Bug type) wander through the history of the storied Pokemon franchise and, because this is a more laid back podcast, decline to add the accent to the name of the series in this podcast description.

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Game designer Hideki Kamiya is known for tense, challenging, and rewarding games like Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 2, The Wonderful 101, and Bayonetta. It's easy to expect certain strengths and design priorities from the games he has helmed as a result, but Okami stands apart. A long and bucolic game known more for its art style than its combat systems, Okami was critically lauded but so commercially underappreciated that it earned a Guinness World Record for "least commercially successful winner of a game of the year award." Unlike Clover's other games (God Hand, Viewtiful Joe), though, Okami has remained well-loved with rereleases on new systems every few years. Robert, Zack, and Angie reminisce about their time with Okami and its peculiar place in the arc of Japanese game development, predating and perhaps precipitating Capcom's 360-era pivot towards more "western" games.

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For almost any hobby, budget is a limiting factor, but gaming is unusual in that it's a hobby often carried from childhood into adulthood. Even as free time shrinks and incomes grow, gaming itself can remain a constant. Angela, Robert, and Zack swap stories of getting gifts as kids, saving up for their first purchases, seeing what other kids' households were kitted out with, learning how to prioritize purchases ... and blowing a bunch of cash that they probably shouldn't have.

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Zack, Angela, and Robert look back at the the last of the legendary Game Boy line on its 20th anniversary. Is it fair to call it a portable SNES? Not exactly. Is it unambitious compared to its wild successor, the DS? Only sort of. Do the games hold up? Absolutely. And who reigns supreme when Zack puts the GBA trivia knowledge of the Marrujo siblings to the test?

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Some games are so nice they release them twice, yet almost never unchanged. Sometimes the creators only make small tweaks like adding save states or a concept art gallery, and sometimes they make an entirely new game with the same story and premise, and there's a lot of variation between those two poles. Robert, Zack, and Angie discuss their own experiences with ports, remakes, and remasters, and can't resist broadening the conversation to talk about game preservation and history.

A discussion of Final Fantasy VII Remake from 34:03 - 37:29 includes some spoilers for that title.

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The Legend of Zelda was first published 35 years ago this month for the Famicom Disk System, and has been one of the medium's most storied sagas since then. Angela, Robert, and Zack reminisce about the series and recount their own personal highs and lows with the franchise. They also discuss the trauma of lost save games and hardware failure, and more or less introduce themselves in this inaugural episode.

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