FRATRICIDE AND SMOOCHES

DAIRYLEA TRIANGLES

CONVERSATIONAL BREAKDOWN

What on earth do any of these things have to do with love?

Join Our Three Cents as we, or at least Chris, willfully misinterprets the theme for this Valentine's Day special, before giving genuine recommendations for games to play with the special people that may be in your lives.

Much love from your favourite gaming goons.

In our final numbered episode of season one you will hear:  a particularly weasely quiz question; Jonathan getting hot and heavy over a listener's question; some thoughts on our secret santa gifts; and Chris' thoughts on a classic.

Then more games. Three incredible games. A veritable triumvirate of bloody good games.

Jonathan talks up one of the best handheld Mario games of all time whilst simultaneously throwing swathes of depth-perception-based criticism at 1986’s Labyrinth. Minty reminisces about Pocket Monster themed ephemera present at the birth of a franchise and Chris bigs up a mostly forgotten brawling treasure from the back catalogue of the legendary Sega Saturn.

Perhaps these are games you loved? Or perhaps they're games you'll grow to love.

We certainly love them. And we love you.

Would you, our dear listeners, consumers of our humble podcast, wish to listen to our thoughts and feelings on games of the video variety?

Allow Jonathan to describe the three stages of the Souls-like, and the violent combination of Hotline Miami and MasterChef Australia. Humour Chris' attempt to intellectualise not one, not two, but THREE indie-darlings. Let Minty sell you on the joys of Volition's Saints Row: The Third through its semi-recent release for Nintendo's hybrid console offering.

Then dive into extended discussion on a flagship Ninty franchise's tentpole release; a genre defining puzzle platformer; and an arcade shooter that no-one played.

HURRY UP

It's Ocarina of Time, Wario Land 4, and TxK.

And some other bits.

What is Grand Theft Auto 3 x Metroid Zero Mission x Super Mario 64? The amount of time you should waste before listening to this episode!

Three absolute franchise behemoths feature in this swish and dense episode as we trawl our three Cents’ memories of their gaming childhoods!

Plus, the intrepid Pokémon trainers among them are nearing the end of their Galarian adventures, and Minty merges some dragons, Chris takes on a new puzzle platformer indie game in the form of Gris, and, quite fittingly as Jonathan is currently on his honeymoon, he chats about his experience in The Touryst!

Plus Minty discovers a new consonant...

PS - for the eagle-eared listeners, you may notice some temporal inconsistencies in our discussions from the last episode, which is because we recorded this episode at the tail end of last year! Almost like a flashback. Almost like a multi-narrative story. Go forwards and then go back for the full picture. Christopher Nolan would be proud!

See you next year! 2020 vision! Something something decade!

Now we’ve got all the contrived new year bumph out the way let’s enjoy the New Year episode with some contrived, vaguely Dickensian bumph:

2019 might have been an absolute mound of turds, but it’s been another great year of gaming. Jonathan has spent most of it smacking down nightmarish monsters in Lordran, Minty’s been smacking down dragons in various quests, and Chris spent most of it smacking down coloured shapes in... Tetris.

What’s been the best games of the past year, according to the centipedes? What games are they looking to in the future? What did they get in their secret Santa presents?

Find out all this and more as we delve into the Games of past, present and future. Happy New Year everyone!

NINTENDO FIFTY FOURRRRRRRR

THIS WEEK: Chris gets annoyed at shoddy portsmanship of a storied RPG franchise. Jonathan can't be bothered with Star Wars: Law and Order. Minty takes an extended dip in a rusty lake.

Let the boys' fifty fourth favourite videogames whisk you away on an island holiday! Or to another dimension by way of a portal in a mysterious underground facility! Or on a cross country roadtrip!

We challenge anyone to find a single episode of a podcast that includes conversation that flows seamlessly between Mario-themed waterboarding, the crowbar's cultural ascendency, and handheld stereoscopy's finest moment.

Please enjoy. We want you to enjoy.

This week on Our Three Cents we have another eclectic triptych of games including an Italian-plumber-based-handheld-sporting RPG, a 32-bit odyssey about a man’s obsession with hiding in a cardboard box, and an epic adventure involving a black knight in the darkness of the night whilst you try to forge some lightness into the world!

Elsewhere, Chris spends his week killing time with Suicide Guy, and we also have a full debrief on Pokémon Sword & Shield, complete with the presentation of the 1st ever annual Jonathan Andrew Dunn Pokémon Awards. Find out which lucky critters have been selected as the recipients of the coveted JADPAs!

And, more importantly, find out whether Jonathan & Chris’ school English teacher, Mr Haywood, ever got round to playing Chris’ childhood gaming creation, Dunce Goes to Hollywood?

Only on Our Three Cents. What a bunch of absolute ridiculousness. Amen.

Oh boy! In a bumper episode, hear the trio chop through a massive stack of games they've played recently, as well as their usual three listed all-time favourites!

Would you like to know our thoughts on The World Next Door, Metal Wolf Chaos, or Forager? How about Ni No Kuni and its sequel, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, or Bloodstained? Maybe Ring Fit Adventure, Luigi's Mansion 3, or Pokémon Sword and / or Shield? Or even the varied entries in the Cube Escape series of mobile games?

For this week's numbered entries, Minty goes for a splash with the Gamecube's legendary Wind Waker and regales its avian-come-oceanic story with the gusto of a Jackanory presenter; Chris shoots some baddies with a plastic pistol and a bulky cathode ray tube television in the fantastic home port of Time Crisis 2; and Jonathan goes deep on the late Clover Studio's ridiculously stylish whack-em-up Viewtiful Joe.

(big deep breath)

So come along and enjoy some of O3C's most impressive expletive bleeping, some silly callbacks for long term fans, everyone's favourite Pokémon, 'Floopididoop', as well as a LOT of curry.

On the menu this week - the further adventures of Minty questing after dragons, Jonathan grinding some stones and Chris racing a football (something like that I believe…)

In the rankings, a classic Nintendo game on a classic Nintendo system, a small fragment of AI experiencing isolation and “a big warm hug of a game.” Three really quite incredible games - real absolute bangers!

Also dogs. Well, more specifically requests for dogs. If it wasn’t implied in all our episodes previously, we now request dogs explicitly.

Dogs are great. We don’t deserve them.