The Arcade

Hello gang, and welcome back (finally) to an all-new episode of The Arcade! We’ve been away for the last few weeks, so we’ve got a bit of catching up to do. As always, this episode starts with the Ludicrous Leadoff, which this time has us talking about yet another Pokémon card that sold for wayyyy too much money. We keep the money talk going while also discussing a common theme so far in 2022: mergers & acquisitions. We’ll discuss the announced plans for Epic Games to acquire the website Bandcamp, as well Nintendo making an acquisition of their own, albeit, very small. Staying with Nintendo, we’ll chime in on the newest Pokémon games which were recently revealed, as well as Capcom’s announcement of the next Street Fighter game. Closing out the news portion on this episode, we discuss plans for both another Sonic the Hedgehog movie and a TV series, as well as where you can watch the Twisted Metal series. In our Blast From The Past segment, we mark the 15th anniversary of Zack Snyder’s first big comic book movie, 300, as well as the 35th anniversary of the Mel Gibson and Danny Glover team-up movie, Lethal Weapon. Continue reading →

Hi gang, and thanks for returning to The Arcade. We start this all-new episode off two with Ludicrous Leadoffs, the first of which has us talking about a classic episode of The Simpsons! I mean, any excuse to discuss a classic episode is alright with us. Specifically, we’re talking about the “22 Short Films About Springfield” from the show’s seventh season as one segment from it has been turned into a point-and-click adventure game available to play now. In the second Ludicrous Leadoff, we spend more time talking about NFT’s, only this time they’re 50th anniversary “giftable” NFT’s from the dead-skin-mask-wearing husk that calls itself Atari. Moving into the more meat & potatoes news of the week, we recap and give our thoughts on the latest big merger & acquisition to be announced in the gaming world, that, of course, being Sony’s plan to acquire Bungie for $3.6 billion. Following that, we talk about the other big acquisition in the gaming world with Wordle being acquired by the New York Times. We also get into some updated sales figures for the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. In our Blast From The Past, we mark the 25th anniversary of Mario Kart 64 followed by the 15th anniversary of the TV series, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Continue reading →

Hey to all you cool cats and welcome back to The Arcade. We start this all-new episode off with the two craziest stories from the last little while in our Ludicrous Leadoffs. First up, we let you know about the newly announced biopic about “Weird Al” Yankovic that’s set to star Daniel Radcliffe. In the other Ludicrous Leadoff, (which doubles as our first meaty news story), we talk about Microsoft’s announced acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We’ll break down the details, what might happen to controversial Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, give our thoughts on the transaction, and compare this deal to some other major deals in recent memory. After all that major deal talk, we’ll discuss yet another gaming deal that was, briefly, the largest business deal in the history of video games. That would be Take-Two Interactive’s announced $12.7 billion takeover of the mobile game developer, Zynga. Once we’ve exhausted all our talk about big-money deals, we discuss some money that’s going to be a big help as we recap the most recent Games Done Quick event and share the final tally. In our Blast From The Past segment, we mark the 15th anniversary of WarioWare: Smooth Moves, as well as the 35th anniversary of the TV series, Unsolved Mysteries. Continue reading →

Come one, come all, as we here at The Arcade return to you for the first time in 2022! We hope all of you out there managed to survive the holidays, as well as the past 12 months, and are glad that we can be back together again. On this episode, we look back at the year that was 2021 with a focus on some of its bigger stories. In a strange twist, none of the big stories actually involve video games. I guess that just shows what a strange year it was, huh? Instead, we’ll discuss the rise of GameStop’s stock, NFT’s unfortunately, becoming a thing, and the market for collectible cards and video games (seemingly) losing its goddamn mind. We’ll also touch on the ongoing legal tussle between Epic Games and Apple, as well as the supply chain issues that are currently impacting pretty much all aspects of daily life. Continue reading →

Come on in everybody, and thanks for joining us on The Arcade’s 15th annual Christmas Music Special!

The M.O. for this show is to bring you music for the season you probably haven’t heard before. And boy howdy, do we deliver on that once again this year. Kicking off this year’s show is the Ludicrous Leadoffs, which are themed around internet humor and Christmas comedy. What falls into that category, you might ask? Well, Jon Lajoie for starters, followed by Garfunkel & Oates, the band My Dick out of Ohio, as well as a holiday assortment of audio treats from Homestar Runner. Looking to keep the good times rolling and bring a bit more energy to the party, we take a trip down to the Big Easy for a New Orleans Christmas which features some jazzy tunes, some Dixieland ditties, and the great “Satchmo” himself, Louis Armstrong. If you’ve listened to any of these music shows through the years, you’ll know that Mike and Dennis enjoy music on the heavier side of the spectrum. It shouldn’t surprise you then that this year’s Christmas show has some metal music offerings. Specifically, these are metal songs covering or inspired by classic Christmas movies. That isn’t the only group of darker holiday music we have for you as we also dig into the world of music from Christmas monster movies. Yes, it’s true, Christmas monster movies are totally a thing. Tune in to learn more!

As always, we encourage you to follow the links below to add these songs to your collection. We hope you enjoy this show, and we wish all of you out there a Merry Everything and Happy New Year! Continue reading →

Hi gang, and thanks for joining us once again after an unplanned week away. We start this week’s episode off with two Ludicrous Leadoffs that are both video game-related! Truly, a strange occurrence. In the first Ludicrous Leadoff, we attempt to understand why a new game is being released for the Wii U eShop, (because that’s a thing that’s happening), followed by learning about a mod for Skyrim VR which lets users cast spells using only their minds. The gaming news portion of the show starts with informing you about Ubisoft jumping into the NFT pool with both feet through the launch of their “Quartz” platform. After that, we discuss Kickstarter’s recently announced plan to develop their own blockchain platform, followed by an update in the ongoing legal drama between Epic Games and Apple. Spoiler Alert: you’ll still have to use Apple’s in-app payment system for the foreseeable future. We also go over some of the winners from this year’s edition of The Game Awards, let you know when PUBG: Battlegrounds is going free-to-play, as well as when you can pre-order the Analogue Pocket. In our Blast From The Past segment, we honor the 15th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Gamecube, and the 20th anniversary of one of Wes Anderson’s early works, The Royal Tennenbaums. Continue reading →

Hello world, and thanks for plugging us into your earholes! We start this episode, as always, with the Ludicrous Leadoffs. In the first story, we let you know how you can make a cool $200,000 simply by letting a robot walk around wearing your face. In the second Ludicrous Leadoff, we discuss what sure sounds to us like a scam with news of a company selling a virtual tract of land for over $2 million. Speaking of things that sound to use like a scam, we move out of the Ludicrous Leadoffs with an update on the funding campaign for Star Citizen as it surpasses $400 million raised. Staying on the dollars and cents train, we give our thoughts on Epic Games announcing their acquisition of music-game maker, Harmonix. As we mentioned previously, the original Xbox turns 20 years old this year and we’ll share with you some ways that Microsoft is trying to commemorate that milestone. In our Blast From The Past segment, there are two old items that we think deserve discussion. Both of them are movies, and both of them are a surprising number of years old! First up, we mark the 10th anniversary of the Muppets relaunch movie, simply called The Muppets, followed by marking the 30th anniversary of The Addams Family film adaptation. Continue reading →

Hey party people, thanks for tuning in for more Arcade goodness! This week, we open the show with fraud-centric Ludicrous Leadoffs. In the first, we have a chuckle about a man who is now being charged in the USA for using his emergency business loan to buy a Pokémon card. In the second Ludicrous Leadoff, we talk about a software developer from Australia who has scrapped together a whole bunch of NFT’s and made them available for download on something called The NFT Bay. Moving on from the scammy-scams and into more legitimate gaming news, we let you know about a new kind of Dragon Ball game from Bandai Namco that doesn’t feature any of your favourite fighters. After that, we cover some of the categories and nominees announced for this year’s edition of The Game Awards, followed by giving our thoughts on Warner Bros.'s newly announced multi-franchise fighting game, MultiVersus. Rounding out the news discussion is word that Nintendo will finally start allowing officially sanctioned Smash Bros. tournaments starting in 2022. In our Blast From The Past section, we celebrate milestone anniversaries for some pretty significant contributors to the last two decades of gaming; Minecraft, the Nintendo Wii, and the Nintendo GameCube. Continue reading →

Hey gang, and welcome back to The Arcade for our first episode in the month of November! On the episode this week, we feature a rundown of mostly business-related gaming news items. First up is our Ludicrous Leadoff where we discuss recently announced plans for the FaZe Clan e-Sports gaming team to become a publicly-traded entity on the New York Stock Exchange. After that, we discuss a very big acquisition from the company behind the Unity engine as they’re acquiring the Weta visual effects company before discussing Apple’s attempt to deny developers’ ability to cut Apple out of transactions on the App Store being swatted down by a US federal judge. From there, we catch up on the latest facts & figures from Nintendo’s recent financial report regarding sales of the Nintendo Switch, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, as well as Metroid Dread. We’ll also discuss the global supply chain issues as they are impacting the video gaming world with production issues announced by Sony for the PS5, Valve for the Steam Deck, and Panic for the Playdate. In our Blast From The Past segment, we have four items to talk about, and all of them are video game-related! This week, we fete milestone anniversaries for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the Microsoft Xbox console, as well as Halo: Combat Evolved. Continue reading →

Come one, come all and listen if you dare, to our Halloween show that will give you a scare. The plan this year is to make Halloween killer, with songs aplenty that give you a chiller. We play tunes about people who like to kill, all to give you people a great big thrill. There’s music about psychos and songs with horns. There’s even a song about that dreaded candy corn. So open your ears and let the sound flow in between as we bring you this show for Halloween. Continue reading →