We -- the Brothers Moriarty -- loved us some Ninja Gaiden in our younger years. The NES original is actually a vague reinterpretation of an arcade title by the same name that preceded it; yet, in turning Ninja Gaiden from a beat-'em-up into an action-platformer, developer Tecmo spawned a powerhouse that easily rivals other late-'80s classics. Indeed, it belongs in the conversation of best NES games, full-stop. Our investigation into Ryu Hayabusa's retro adventure doesn't only end with the first game, though, as we explore its contemporaries on the market and wax poetic about the heyday of the fictional ninja in greater media, and how Ninja Gaiden's deeply-told story gave us context, perhaps for the first time in our then-young lives, into the deeper potential of video games.
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#234 | Ninja Gaiden (NES)

A weekly, retro-and-nostalgia-themed podcast co-hosted by brothers Colin and Dagan Moriarty. Video games, television shows, movies, books, toys, comics, and more... this podcast covers it all. New episodes post each Monday. To get every episode a week early and ad-free, as well as gain the ability to submit questions and comments to be read on the show, please consider supporting the show on Patreon: patreon.com/laststandmedia
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PJ returns to KnockBack to talk about all things skateboarding. Long Island's favorite skate rats chop it up about Tony Hawk, Supreme, injuries, favorite tricks and the infamous 'vert button'.

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#283 | 'Do A Kickflip!' Skateboarding with Dagan and PJ

We're settling back in from Sacred Symbols 300 live in New York City, and the experience has us (The Brothers Moriarty) feeling nostalgic, which is a good thing for our retro-and-nostalgia-themed show. We're particularly sentimental about our parents, who both attended the show, and who -- at 73 years old, both -- have always come through for us, even if the path wasn't always linear, or even clear. We love making fun of our mom and dad on KnockBack; it's a staple of Dagan and Colin podcasts. But we thought we'd go in the other direction today, and talk about all the ways we love and appreciate our parents, how we think they helped form us into the people we are today, and add to the deep Moriarty lore that only grows by leaps and bounds here at Last Stand.
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#282 | Our Parents

Dagan's best friend and Colin's other older brother finally arrives on the KnockBack scene to discuss skateboarding, video games, and growing up on the sometimes shady streets of Long Island.
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#281 | 'Sega, Skateboarding and Shenanigans' The PJ WIlliams Episode

With all of the hullabaloo surrounding Arrowhead's hit PS5 and PC game Helldivers 2, we figured we'd delve into its most obvious inspiration: Starship Troopers. Most people know Starship Troopers as the 1997 Paul Verhoeven sci-fi flick, but it's actually much more than that. It all started as an award-winning novel written back in 1959 by an author named Robert Heinlein, and strangely, the film and book couldn't possibly be more different in many respects. But because the book (which is awesome) is a quick read, and the film (which is good, but not nearly as good as the book) is comparatively short, too, so we figured we'd digest both, take lots of notes, and compare and contrast the two. The result is an interesting conversation, one that asks questions like: Is the book really fascist-aligned, as often claimed? Are the bugs the victims of human aggression, and could we ever come to terms with such a race? Does the idea of earning one's citizenship actually not sound that crazy, after all? Could every human have a deathwish, deep down inside? Clearly, we've much to discuss.
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#280 | Starship Troopers (Book + Film)

For this week's KnockBack, we thought we'd do something a little bit different. A major fuel source for the origins of our podcast back in 2018 was our shared love of the NES: The hardware, its games, and the community that's long surrounded it. So we thought we'd delve back into that subject matter by each constructing a Top 10 NES Games list and then trying to fuse them together, a task we almost immediately abandoned when we realized we approached our respective lists quite differently. Thus, what emerges is a robust talk about many of the games from our respective childhoods, and how we still grapple with their undeniable greatness to this day.
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#234 | Ninja Gaiden (NES)

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