The Pitch

Say what you will about stop motion animation, there's an undeniable degree of difficulty associated with it that makes it a little more impressive than CGI emulating the clay sculpture style. This is the core hubris of the "Wallace and Gromit " people hooking up with Dreamworks to make "Flushed Away", a story about a posh surface rat getting flushed down the toilet to fight a frog king. And then they made a game about it. And then we mostly talked about Jackass, and a bizarre YouTube channel called "Max TV".

Sellia is a town in Caelid that holds many secrets, sealed away behind an impenetrable puzzle that involves lighting three torches. A strange sage named Gowry acts as our guide, sending us to the Aeonian Swamp to recover a cosmic artifact before directing us to the heart of Selia to learn where these people came from, and why the Golden Order had turned a vicious eye toward them in the past.

On this episode, we cover: Power Pack #28, X-Factor #11, Uncanny X-Men #212, Daredevil #238. And boy, that Daredevil issue. Dubya Tee Eff.

Reminder that you can read along with and ahead of the show by subscribing to Marvel Unlimited (we don't get paid for you doing that, so it's not an ad, it's just a cool service). You can also use Comixology, or buy the trades from your local comic book shop (the preferred method, if we're being honest). Be sure to check with your local library to see if they have them there! You can find one using this site

Music by Gary, podcast art by our friend Wayne

Kole, Ben, Dennis, and David talk about Immortality, Live a Live, Taiji, and much more!

• Kole: Immortality. Live a Live.
• Dennis: God of War (2018). Death Stranding. Opus Magnum.
• Ben: The Planet Crafter. Taiji.
• David: Destiny 2.

• Free Play!

• PlayStation Stars look like NFTs even though they aren’t.
• Pacific Drive looks rad as hell.
• Nintendo shows details about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
• Against all odds they’re making a new Theatrhythm Final Fantasy game.
• That’s not the real TSR, it’s some bigots who trademark squatted.
• They made an AI-art SHMUP, with all of the ethical concerns associated with that.

Venom Snake still has some fights to fight, as we pick up Skull Face's trail in Afghanistan to experience the majority of what the Phantom Pain has to offer. As a genuine heads up, this episode might not be for you if you adore this game or Hideo Kojima's whole vibe. We clown on things while gushing about the play, which some people take us as completely hating the whole experience. If you will take that personally then please consider yourself forewarned.

Thanks again to our executive producer Jade!

Support Watch Out for Fireballs!

Everything To Guppy is a weekly comedy/gaming podcast that releases four 15-minute episodes in a single hour-long chunk every Tuesday for reasons that seemed good at the time. Gary Butterfield (Watch Out For Fireballs) and William Hughes (The A.V. Club) attempt to analyze every single item, boss, character, and concept in the rogue-lite video game The Binding Of Isaac. They manage to pull it off only slightly less than 50 percent of the time.

Better late than never, right? Even if it's 21 years too late. 1986 saw the release of "An American Tail", a Don Bluth-animated film about a family of mice that fled Russia to head to America... 1986 being, of course, one of the last times that an optimistic story about immigration could be told in America. Then, in 2007, some weirdos decided to make a licensed game about it. One that even manages to make Monkey Ball mechanics un-fun!

This week we continue our journey along the Caelid Highway, down further into the wilds of the rot-blighted land. Starting at the Smouldering Wall, we venture into Fort Gael and the prison complex beneath it, before reaching the swamps and dragons of the southern reaches.

Next week we will turn northward into Selia and the Aeonian Swamp, ground zero of Malenia's blossoming.

Thank you Jade!

What do you do when there's a Kojima about? What do you do when a game has some of the best stealth action in video games, one of the most satisfying loops in video games, but punctuates it with some of the worst boss fights and clumsy exposition and plotting? It's a complicated game that gives us complicated feelings! Listen in if you want to hear us wrestle with Kojima's legacy, both as critics and as one current and one former fan.

And if you want to support marginalized creators, check out Nine Noir Lives! A new point and click adventure game! https://www.nnlgame.com/

Support Watch Out for Fireballs!

This premium episode is about Jackie Chan's Stuntmaster, a PlayStation game that makes you realize that stunts are only cool when it's actual people doing them. A computer game character can, by definition, do anything its creator tells it to. But this middling beat-em-up provides a good springboard for us to talk about Gary's most recent thrift store find, an amateur comic from the '80s called "Crossed Swords".