The Game Show

Happy Halloween from The Game Show. Jack Burton, Jess, Logan, and Darria play Phasmophobia together for the first time while Break hosts from the van. Four haunted locations, three total wipes, one correct guess. Obake, Deogen, Demon, Revenant. Plus Halloween costumes, a tribute to Patrick Stewart, and everyone’s plans for the weekend. Back to the normal time next week, Wednesday 9 PM Central. More at breakmanx.com

Games that weren’t supposed to scare you, but did. Jess and Break go through the creepiest moments in non-horror games: Big Boo’s Haunt, Lavender Town, Sonic CD’s hidden message, the Broodmother, the Bottom of the Well, SA-X, the Phantom Train, Skyrim’s House of Horrors, the Happy Mask Salesman, Shinra Mansion, 2300 AD, Stardew Valley’s dark shrine, the Guardians, the Rat Man dens, Ravenholm, and the Harvest Moon mad scientist with a mermaid in his basement.

Also this week: EA shuts down BioWare and cancels Mass Effect, Fight Night returns, the next Xbox reportedly runs 1,200 to 1,800 dollars, Final Fantasy Resonance and Switch Sports Resort release, and Fenris sent the Pokemon save.

Next week: the Halloween episode. The crew plays Phasmophobia together on air for the first time. It may be Thursday instead of Wednesday.

The Game Show has been covering gaming since 2002. New episodes Wednesdays at 9 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel. Pokemon Crystal with Jess and Break streams Mondays at 6 PM Central.

Clone consoles are everywhere now. Some are good. Some are junk that looks good in a listing. Tonight Ace joins The Game Show to sort out which is which.

Ace designed the Mega Amp, the audio mod for the Genesis and Mega Drive, and wrote the Sega-16 guide on Genesis hardware revisions. He spent years building arcade cores for MiSTer at the chip level, including Arkanoid, Iron Horse, Jackal and Nemesis. He knows what a real board does and what a copy misses.

We get into clone hardware, FPGA, audio accuracy, and what he thinks preservation should actually look like.

Support Ace: https://ko-fi.com/ace9921

What game came in the box? This week we go console by console, from the NES to the Switch 2, and pick our favorite pack-in game for each one. The classics are all here: Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Sonic, Wii Sports. So are the misfires like Keith Courage in Alpha Zones and the oddballs like Hexic on the 360 and Astro’s Playroom on the PS5. Jess makes the case for Pokémon Colosseum, Jet Set Radio Future, and Pokopia. Jack picks Halo every time. Along the way we cover PlayStation demo discs, the TurboDuo launch disc, the GBA bundles nobody remembers, and why 1-2-Switch should have been free.

Also this week: Xbox says it is not for sale, Star Wars Galactic Racer is the best reviewed Star Wars game in 20 years, the Pokémon Fossil Museum heads to Denver, and 007 First Light gets free DLC.

Watch Jess and Break play Pokémon Crystal live Mondays at 6:00 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel.

The Game Show has been covering gaming since 2002. More at breakmanx.com.

Hot takes night. Break, Jack Burt0n, Jess, Logan, and Darria defend their spiciest gaming opinions: GameCube was the best of its generation, long games are overrated, Souls games aren't a flex, and piracy helped the industry. Plus a clip from the very first Game Show in 2002 where Break predicted Microsoft's whole playbook. News: Suda51 goes independent, Microsoft patents ads after boss fights, Witcher 3 Remastered, and GTA 6's map size.

The full crew is back and the topic is video game endings. We pick the best endings ever made, from Chrono Trigger and Super Metroid to Portal, Final Fantasy VI, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Subnautica, Alan Wake 2 and a surprisingly emotional case for Mario Kart Wii. Then a lightning round on the worst, including Mass Effect 3, Mega Man X6 and whoever that was pretending to be Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 7.

News this week: the Xbox layoffs and Halo moving to Activision, Control Resonant launching tomorrow, Jess reviews the new Resident Evil movie, Sega nearly cancelled Sonic, the Tokyo Game Show recap, the DLSS 5 leak, and someone put a fruit fly brain in Minecraft.

The Game Show has been running since 2002. Watch live every Wednesday at 9:00 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel, and catch the Pokémon Crystal co-stream with Jess and Break on Mondays at 6:00 PM Central. Full archive and Discord at breakmanx.com.

Spoiler warning. We talk about how these games end.

Sir Randall of Ye Old Press joins Break to talk about building physical big box editions for digital-only games. Hollow Knight: Silksong. Ocarina of Time on PC. Warframe. Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. He designs the box, prints the art, and puts a disc in it.

We get into how he makes them, why Limited Run and First Press pushed him into doing it himself, his official Colossal Cave collector's editions for Ken and Roberta Williams, and what Sony's 2028 decision to end physical production means for people who want to own what they buy.

Plus the news: Diablo V, Xbox picks up Kojima's PHYSINT after PlayStation walked, Sony argues in court that you never owned your digital games, Game Pass day-one rumors, and a possible Eternal Darkness remaster.

Randall's work: yeold.press and Sir Randall Does Stuff on YouTube.

The Game Show, running since 2002. Season 13. breakmanx.com

We gave box art a full episode. Jess, Jack, and Logan brought picks, the rules were loose, and Jess found a cover so cursed it stopped the show.

First the news. A new Nintendogs is rumored for Switch 2. The Blizzard union ratified its first contract covering 1,900 employees. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe got eight-player split-screen, Mario Kart World added free SNES tracks, Metroid Ravenous got a trailer, and the Ocarina of Time remake was revealed the day before.

Then box art. The original Mega Man cover that has nothing to do with the game. Zelda II manual art. Trojan. The Sims Medieval. Pokemon Pinball. Blue Dragon in Japan. Garfield Kart, which somehow has never come up in 650 episodes. The Okami box that shipped with an IGN watermark on it. And Snow White and the Seven Clever Boys.

We also debuted our new BreakmanX artwork this episode.

The Game Show has been running since 2002. New episodes every week at breakmanx.com.

The crew heads back to the arcade this week. Everyone brought a list of their favorite arcade games and the memories that go with them. Break's picks run from Konami beat 'em ups like TMNT and X-Men to shmups like Truxton, Radiant Silvergun, and Metal Slug, plus a deep cut called The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy that you've probably never played. Jack came in with fifteen picks of his own, including Sunset Riders, After Burner II, and Time Crisis II. Then the whole table swaps arcade stories. Aladdin's Castle discoveries, two hour drives for DDR, and the first time anyone saw Mortal Kombat in the wild.

In the news: Gamescom 2026 brings a Witcher 3 remaster and a new expansion, Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 finally frees MGS4 from the PS3, Xbox starts beta testing a disc to digital program, and Dave Bautista is officially cast as Kratos.

The Game Show has been running since 2002 as one of the first video game podcasts ever made. Hosted by BreakmanX with Jack Burton, Maul, Darria, Logan, and Jess. New episodes every week at breakmanx.com.

Tonight we’re talking cheat codes and the Game Genie. How they worked, why they worked, the arms race between publishers and kids trying to break their games.

🎮 About The Game Show
Running since 2002, one of the earliest gaming podcasts around. Season 13 continues our look at consoles, industry news, and the games shaping it all.

🔗 Links
BreakmanX: https://breakmanx.com
Discord: linked at breakmanx.com

► MUSIC
Opening: Project X – Mega Man 2 “Project X2 – Title Screen” OC ReMix – https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00625
Closing: Project X – Mega Man 2 “Ending” Buy the album here: https://projectx.bandcamp.com/album/m…