The Explosive Alan Podcast

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our lovely listeners (and our ugly ones too). What a memorable year it's been, with all those things that happened. You know, the things. So numerous are the things, that we've collated them all into this handy, digestible episode containing the least worst things we've done on The Explosive Alan Podcast in 2014. In other words: WE'RE DOING A GODDAMN CLIP SHOW. *mushroom cloud*

Last year's Drunkcast had a terrible baby. Enjoy our shambolic recollections of the gaming year gone by, as well as an awful Christmas play that could do actual mental harm to infants. Have a wonderful birthday, Jesus!

Everything's slightly different this week, from the incredibly suspect listener-generated episode names and transformed news section, to a Great Debate that features very little in the way of debating and a challenge that, for the first time, is provided by our special guest. We're not really sure what's going on, to be honest. We're scared. Hold us.

Prepare to listen in awe to the wise words of amateur Amazon reviewer 'Freedom Of Speech', who could teach the professional critical community a thing or two. There's other stuff about Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed Unity, Halo 5, Overwatch and sausage roll-inspired homicide, but really it's Mr. Speech's show.

Regular listeners might spot that this week's intro theme is the first to be inspired by a listener suggested episode title (Ep33's in fact) - we're open to suggestions for future songs, so start sending them in! Episode 42 doesn't answer the ultimate question to life, the universe and everything, but we do find out who the gang would team up with to blow up Parliament, and discover what game Simon would make featuring a drunken toddler and a Fleshlight. Spoiler: it ain't pretty. Also! Chat of first-person GTA, the return of Denis Dyack and the future of mobile gaming.

(And if you'd like to join the Explosive Alan Minecraft server, Tweet @chongster62! Make sure you're running version 1.7.10.)

Look! It's a blue moon! Must be time for another Explosive Alan Podcast! Apologies for our ongoing sporadic release schedule but, y'know, work and stuff. In this episode, we answer more of your pressing personal questions, celebrate news of the return of Micro Machines and LucasArts classics, create an unholy fusion of EGX and Blankety Blank, and hear what you have to say about Nintendo’s reliance on nostalgia. And here's a link to that survey we chat about: bit.ly/1tAwTTG

We've discovered the secret to making podcasts the easy way: just get other people to do all the talking. We ventured all the way to a slightly different part of London to attend gaming expo thing EGX AKA TEFKA Eurogamer Expo, and asked a whole bunch of listeners and developers to chat away about the games they're playing and the games they're making. We still do a bit of podchat, including news of a Tetris movie (A TETRIS MOVIE), an on-off-then-on-again challenge and an extensive Great Debate about the confusing Destiny.

Despite the title, we don't actually cover Microsoft's potential buyout of Mojang in any meaningful detail. Misleading, us? We do, however, let our tongues wag over Destiny, surprising Sherlock cameos, and the uneasy relationship between the gaming media and its audience. We're kindly assisted by the seemingly omnipotent Matt Lees. Seriously, he manage to post seven Tweets, publish a 2,000 word blog post and produce three YouTube videos while we recorded AND WE DIDN'T EVEN SEE HIM MOVE.

Sorry we're so late on this one, but we were busy figuring out how to melt down Gareth and Ash into a single uber-presenter. Unfortunately we just plain melted them (apologies to their families) so we got Julia Hardy to step in until we figure out a way to reconstruct them from the gloop that remains. We've all been there. We mask our sadness pretty well while chitting the chat out of news of new/New 3DS-s, hellish Saints Row expansions, Rise of the Tomb Raider's faux-exclusivity and celebrity gaming voiceovers.

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After all that exercise in Simon's takeover episode, normal service resumes as three-quarters of Team ExAl stay firmly on their behinds. And oh! The things we talk about. Destiny's friends-only raid policy, some fool trying to sue Sony, the re-return of Resident Evil, Yogsventures controversies, Simon not knowing who Dominik Diamond is (at least we do if he hasn't edited it out) and 'TV's' Dan Maher actually appearing on TV.