Bonus episode! Tom chats to top games critic and lovely person Christian Donlan in a meandering discussion about Star Trek, old Mario games, classic sci-fi films, Rogue, and much more. And then Christian’s cat makes an appearance, which just makes everything even better.

The main C&C pod shall resume service shortly! Also another film ‘n telly pod with Jamie Brittain is in the works. Also I, Tom, having dropped the third-person pretence only moments into writing this intro, will politely nag Christian to do another one of these when he has time. Hope you all enjoy!

Show notes!

• Tom has been playing a lot of Mario Galaxy, Sunshine, and Mario 64 on Switch. Which one is the best though?

• We got into a lot of fun tangents early. Films mentioned: 2001 A Space Odyssey, Rush, Blade Runner, Nice Guys, Les Mis.

• Remember cinemas? BFI constantly sponsor reruns of classic films in the UK – worth a follow.

• Rogue is on Steam, kind of, purists might want to hunt for the unchanged original version.

• Christian revisited Rogue in 2020 and wrote this great piece about it. I love articles that make me immediately want to download a game and chase the same experience.

• ToeJam and Earl is just Rogue – discuss.

• Special shout-out to Christian’s cat, making a sadly brief audio cameo.

• Christian intelligently references Orson Wells’ Moby Dick stage show.

• BUT THEN Tom gets carried away and tangentially references Wells’ War of the Worlds radio show because he listened to it recently and got excited.

• Modern Rogue descendants (there are so, so many more) – Spelunky, Hades, and Below (not so good).

• The title of the next Stereophonics album: “Just Enough Suffering to Make it Worthwhile”

• Diablo: “Hitting skeletons and getting loot”. The perfect five-word elevator pitch.

• Tom dives into the wankthought hole(tm} with reflections on the psychology of dungeons, or at least the gloom and delight of descending to terrible depths and emerging into sunlight as an effective device.

• The Silent Cartographer – Halo, Blighttown, Half-Life Alyx, and so many more games do this, and it’s great.

• Jennifer Allen writes brilliantly about Ski Free over at EG.

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