The Arcade

Hey, Paisanos! It's finally time for another new episode of The Arcade! This week is a very “business of gaming” heavy week. We start things off by discussing the eye-popping amount of money that a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES recently sold for, and follow that up with talk of Apple's recently announced plan to reduce their royalty from transactions on their App Store. We move on from there to share the completely bold and entirely unsubstantiated claims made by both Microsoft and Sony in terms of the sales success enjoyed by their respective new consoles, while Ubisoft made similar boastful claims about the launch success of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Wanting to round out the big three, we share some numbers from Nintendo's most recent financial report that shows the new record for Switch sales in a month, as well as how close Animal Crossing: New Horizons is to becoming the best-selling Switch title ever. Round out the “business of gaming” talk is news that Take-Two Interactive plans to acquire Codemasters for almost $1 billion. In our Blast From The Past this week, we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the cheesy, but enjoyable boxing epic that is Rocky IV, as well as the 50th anniversary of George Harrison's masterpiece triple-album, All Things Must Pass. Continue reading →

Hey gang, and welcome back for a very special edition of The Arcade. As you might have heard, this is a big week in the world of video games as not one, but TWO new consoles are released! With that in mind, we use this episode to give you a rundown of what to expect if you're in the market for a PlayStation 5, an Xbox Series X, or both. We discuss the important numbers of the sizes and specs for each machine, plus what games you'll be able to play at launch, as well as how Sony and Microsoft are trying to beef up their online game offerings. Once our little new console buyer's guide is done with, we turn our attention to things from yesteryear in this week's Blast From Past. There's two items in our final segment as we mark the 20th anniversary of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The 6th Day, followed by celebrating the 30th anniversary of a classic Christmas movie Home Alone. Continue reading →

Hey, all! It's back to “business as usual” on the show this week, which means we start things off with two Ludicrous Leadoffs. In the first, we tell you about a very unusual prize that was given out at a recent gaming competition in Japan, and in the second, we share the awesome news of Tiny Toons Adventures coming back! Getting into the “meat & potatoes” portion of the gaming news, we give our thoughts on the recent delay of Cyberpunk 2077 by a few weeks to a new December release date. After that, we share the news that EA is facing a class-action lawsuit in Canada for using loot boxes in their games and follow that up with the announcement that Sony is planning to buy Crunchyroll for just under $1 billion. Our Blast From The Past segment this week holds two items this week. First up is the Kinect motion-control accessory for the Xbox 360 from back in 2010, and next is the game that launched a thousand plastic instruments; Guitar Hero from 2005. Continue reading →

Hello, world. Given the roller-coaster ride everyone and everything has been on the last several months, at least we have a small bit of normalcy return with our annual Halloween Music Special! As always, we strive to present a selection of seasonally appropriate ditties that you've never heard before. Sorry, friends, but you won't be hearing the Monster Mash, Thriller, or the Ghostbusters theme here. We start this year's show with a group of songs themed around the idea of “Halloween in the Old West”, which brings us songs from Sir Christopher Lee, country singer Buck Owens, and the game Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. After the Old West, we take a trip back in time with a handful of selections from when the music industry was an actual industry and cranked out Halloween novelty songs like clockwork. Returning for another appearance is the Obligatory Metal Group, which this year is themed around cannibals and features choice cuts from Cannibal Corpse, Heaven & Hell, and a pre-Type O Negative song from Peter Steele. Rounding out this year's program is a group of songs that honors the many appearances of the world's foremost bio-exorcist, Beetlejuice! We'll be honoring the character with some selections from the Beetlejuice soundtrack, the animated series, some of his video game appearances, as well as from the recent big-budget Broadway musical. So sit back, relax, and enjoy some haunting sounds during these spooky times. Continue reading →

Hello world, and welcome back to an all-new episode of The Arcade! After being away for the last two weeks, we're playing a bit of catch-up on this week's show, which starts with our Ludicrous Leadoff telling what techno-babble word salad Atari is planning now for the Atari VCS. After that, we spend some time talking about what a trio of big tech companies are doing in the gaming world. First up on that front is Amazon who just recently announced the cancellation of their battle royale game, Crucible. While on the topic of Amazon, we'll also finally have our say on the announcement of Amazon's game-streaming service, Luna. From there, we discuss another one of the biggest tech companies in Apple with an update on the legal proceedings between Epic Games and Apple. After Apple, we move over to Microsoft to talk about what's reportedly a unique workaround they might have for bringing Xbox Game Pass to the iOS platform. With all the big tech talk out of the way, we turn our attention back to games themselves and share our thoughts on Rambo joining Mortal Kombat 11 as a DLC character. In the Blast From The Past, we have three items worth celebrating; The Colbert Report, Mad TV, and Dr. Mario from the NES. Continue reading →

Hey hey, everybody, and welcome back for another sizzling edition of The Arcade! We start this week's show with a Ludicrous Leadoff that's also a primer for the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles as we share the exact sizes and dimensions for these (quite large) machines. Speaking of big numbers, Microsoft made news this week with a big number of their own when they announced a deal to purchase Bethesda for $7.5 billion, so you just know we have a lot to say on that. From there, it's yet more talk about new machines as we divulge some of what the PS5 can do for backwards compatibility, followed by Facebook announcing a new version of the Oculus Quest VR headset. Elsewhere from the gaming world, we discuss Michel Ancel, (the creator of Rayman), recently retiring from the gaming business altogether to start an animal sanctuary in France. In our Blast From The Past this week, we go from the stone age to the future and everywhere in-between as we fete the movie Serenity, as well as classic TV shows Thunderbirds and The Flintstones. Continue reading →

Howdy, y'all! It's time for another new episode of The Arcade. We start this week's proceedings with a Ludicrous Leadoff about one handy home hacker who managed to turn the LEGO Super Mario figure into a controller for Super Mario Bros. With the opening fun out of the way, we dig into the meat & potatoes of gaming news from this week; Sony finally revealing launch details for the PlayStation 5! We'll get into the release date, how much it costs, how much some of the games will cost, as well as give our thoughts on some of the games that were shown off during the digital event. After all that Sony talk, we finally catch up on the most recent happenings in the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic Games. To close out the show, there's a cavalcade of cartoon creations in the Blast From The Past as we celebrate the anniversaries of the Care Bears, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Continue reading →

Hey all, and welcome back for another new episode of The Arcade! We're playing a bit of catch-up after being away for Labor Day last week, but that just gives us yet more to talk about. We start the show with two Ludicrous Leadoffs, the first of which focuses on how Animal Cross: New Horizons is being used in the current US presidential campaign, while the second is of a home hacker finding yet another bizarre device that can run Doom. After that, we did into the meaty gaming news from the past several days, with Microsoft out in front with the reveal of their Xbox Series X, as well as finally giving a firm release date and prices for their next-gen systems. From Microsoft, we move onto another major company that recently detailed their big plans for the fall... Nintendo. The house of Mario recently announced the way they're celebrating Mario's 35th anniversary with new games over the next few months, a new Game & Watch, and a really cool looking Mario Kart RC car. Also, Nintendo did a surprise reveal of a new Hyrule Warriors game coming this fall, so we'll share our thoughts on that as well. Our Blast From The Past segment is home to a trio of cartoons this week as we fete TaleSpin, Freakazoid!, and Earthworm Jim. Continue reading →

Hey all, and welcome to our last show for the month of August! Somehow, it's now the end of August. We start this show off with a very different pair of Ludicrous Leadoffs. In the first, we tell you of a way to punch the Nazis from Wolfenstein 3D in real life and, in the second, we let you know which major retailer recently recreated their catalog in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. From there, we get to the major news of the week, which is the latest developments in the Epic Games/ Apple feud with news of Microsoft lending a supportive word to Epic Games. After that, we tell a tale of money going good with a recap of last week's Summer Games Done Quick event. From there, we give an update on when you can play Airplane Mode, the ridiculous idea for a game that simulates a trans-Atlantic flight in real-time. In this Blast From The Past segment, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mario Tennis for the N64, as well two movies from Robert Rodriguez; Desperado, and Machete. Continue reading →

Hey Paisanos! It’s the newest episode of The Arcade! We kick off this week's show with the Ludicrous Leadoff, which also happens to be the big news in the gaming world over the last week: Epic Games getting into a catfight with Apple! And also Google. But mostly Apple. After that round of fun, we dig into the news this week of Oculus further reminding people that they're owned by Facebook. From there, we deliver the bummer news that the very promising-looking Analogue Pocket handheld has been delayed until 2021. Speaking of 2021, we'll let you know which two popular indie games are getting deluxe editions next year as well. In our Blast From The Past segment, we mark the 25th anniversary of the first Mortal Kombat movie, followed by the 20th anniversary of the original BattleBots series. Continue reading →