In this episode of The Punished Podcast, we’re covering nostalgia in games, not for the games we think are classics… but for the ones that we know don’t quite deserve that praise, but we still love anyway.

I’m not even talking necessarily about games that have aged poorly or were polarizing at the time. These games likely weren’t even beloved as a consensus upon a release, but they still hold a special place in our hearts for some reason. Why is that? Is there room in today’s economy for bad games? Should there be?

Despite not getting the same attention as the timeless classics, these “bad” games are still worth talking about, and maybe we can try to understand more about ourselves as gamers as a result.

– Sam Martinelli, Editor

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Note: This episode has light swearing.

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 22 – Nostalgia (For Games That Aren’t Very Good?!) appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Video game adaptations span far more than just TV. From Mario to Tomb Raider, so many of our favorite franchises have hit the silver screen — to middling results. For so long, video game movies have been seen as a bit of a curse. No matter where you look, there’s a Hollywood adaptation that seems to have lost the plot of a game series you grew up on.

Recently, however, it seems we’re at a turning point. The Fallout and Last of Us shows are great examples, but we’ve also seen an animated take on Castlevania, a gorgeous League of Legends side story in the form of Arcane, a Cyberpunk anime, and so much more. The world of gaming continues to expand, and the quality of these adaptations is only improving. Let’s discuss.

– David Silbert, Editor

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Note: This episode contains swearing and sexual references.

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 21 – Video Game Adaptations appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

As has become our podcast tradition, we end the hottest months with a discussion of big gaming news and a waiver wire for our Fantasy Gaming series. This summer news cycle was no different, with, most notably, a release date of September 4, 2025, for Hollow Knight: Silksong. Like, for real. After drafting Silksong for two years in a row with nothing to show for it and finally letting it go this year… I did not handle it well, as you’ll hear in today’s episode.

– Amanda Tien, Editor

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Note: This episode contains swearing and plenty of shouting.

Need a visual guide as you listen to our Fantasy Gaming waiver wire pickups? Here’s a breakdown of the pre-waiver standings:

Curious how our waiver wire altered the fantasy landscape? We’ve crunched the numbers!

See how the dust settled, below:

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 20 – Summer Gaming News & Fantasy Waiver Wire appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

“Git gud.” Over the past few console cycles, this has become a rallying cry for those who enjoy a good challenge in their video games. From the emergence of the Soulslike genre, to challenging roguelikes and pixel-perfect platformers, there’s no shortage of self-humiliation in which to indulge.

But are difficult video games anything new? In the latest episode of The Punished Podcast, we unpack the history of video game difficulty — from the arcade cabinet to the modern console. We also explore what makes a game challenging, whether that concept equates to “fun,” and more.

The games we discuss may be tough as nails, but this episode is easy listening. You’re in for a treat.

– David Silbert, Editor and Host

Note: This podcast was recorded on May 15, 2025, a few days after we covered PAX East 2025 and several weeks before the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. If it sounds like we were obsessed with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at the time … it’s because we were.

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David Silbert | Sam Martinelli | Gary Wilson | Kei Isobe

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 19 – Video Game Difficulty appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

We’re back from our extended spring break to talk about replaying video games, one of my personal favorite summer hobbies. We discuss why we replay video games, what changes between playthroughs, which games we find ourselves returning to over and over again, balancing new games with old games, the nuances of games that ask for multiple runs (like Nier Automata or Hades), and the best and worst games to replay. We also roast each other a fair amount — perfect timing for the heat dome. 

– Amanda Tien, Editor

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David Silbert | Sam Martinelli | Amanda Tien

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 18 – Video Game Replays appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Today’s episode is another exciting edition of our Fantasy Gaming series, our version of Fantasy Football where we draft video games based on projected Metacritic scores and try to get the best overall team by the end of the year. In Episode 17, we go through all of the best (and worst) games of 2025 so far that we’ve drafted, discussing what worked and what didn’t. Later in the episode, we discuss how the latest scores affect our league standings.

– Amanda Tien, Editor

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Note: It’s worth noting that we recorded this on March 30 and wow, it’s been a big first two weeks of April for gaming news. There was the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct (which made us feel a lot of things, especially after those three seconds of Hollow Knight: Silksong). Additionally, Microsoft’s South of Midnight and Raw Fury’s Blue Prince have received Metacritic scores. Stay tuned for a Fantasy Gaming piece from David this Friday, April 11, with updated standings.

Below is a list of our Fantasy Gaming standings as of the recording date in late March. (For the most up-to-date team scores, view our Friday, April 11 Fantasy Update!)

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 17 – Fantasy Gaming Q1 Check-In appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Today’s podcast topic is retro games and retro gaming as a whole, a subject near and dear to my heart as The Punished Backlog’s resident Old Games Guy. As much as gamers constantly look to the future for the newest and coolest experiences, revisiting and revering the past remains a crucial part of gaming culture.

When I was growing up, the difference between what was modern vs. “retro” was fairly stark and easy to identify: pixelated, 2D arcade games or blocky, early 3D titles were easy to call old and retro (or, in some ways, “dated”) compared to things like Mass Effect, Skyrim, and Gears of War. As time has gone on, however, the lines have blurred, as it still feels weird to call games from the mid-to-late-2000s “retro” when they’re not quite as different from their modern counterparts.

In the latest Punished Podcast episode, we discuss the definition of retro, what retro games still hold up, what game companies owe to preserving game history, and much, much more. Plus, we even have a little WHO YA GOT competition based on retro gaming later in the episode!

– Sam Martinelli, Editor

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Here’s a few quotes from throughout our conversation:

David: “I think there’s a public necessity to preserve these games and a way to partner with private companies to make it happen. But I would also argue that for the big publishers of the world—Amanda, you and I, we’re in marketing—it helps your brand to assure gamers that you care about your history because then gamers give a shit about your future.”

Vaughn: “It’s honestly embarrassing that big game companies lose source code. I’ve seen this stat that like 90% of source code from before 2010 is lost. Like, if you’re Square Enix, and you don’t have the source code for Final Fantasy VIII, and you have to rebuild it from someone’s copy? Like these games have won multiple awards. You don’t just have a copy of it on a disc in a case on a frame on the wall, break in case of emergency?”

Amanda: “Some of those games y’all described, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), I might think of as ‘old school,’ but I don’t think of them as ‘retro.’ I have a very 1980s aesthetic idea of retro. It’s big CRT arcade boxes. It’s these standalone booths. It’s Atari, it’s Pac-Man. It’s pixelated, it’s beep boop beep boop. Trying to define anything from the 2000s as ‘retro’ is hard for me, even if it’s been almost 20 years since a game like Mass Effect (2007) came out.”

Sam: “I think once platform-specific feel went away… that’s when things kind of stopped feeling retro. For example, we’re all big Xbox 360 fans here. If I play an Xbox 360 game on my Xbox Series X, it pretty much feels the same. It’s basically the same experience. I just can also play a new game at the same time. Whereas if you play an N64 game on Nintendo Switch Online, you can tell that it’s weird, that it’s different, that it feels off, because you’ve just copied and pasted something old onto something new.”

Starts around 55:00 during our discussion of preservation in gaming.

Amanda: I’d love to give a shout-out to Zachary Horton and the Vibrant Media Lab at the University of Pittsburgh [where I did my MFA in Creative Writing]. They are one of the preeminent authorities on the [Magnavox], the first home video game console. They’re collecting them… We got to see them in-class. They are so few left in the world! This an academic effort to preserve this stuff, to rebuild things, to share why it mattered. If it’s not going to be the private companies [investing in preservation], then I’d like to see a public investment, and if not then, then it’s going to be the cool academics, the cool nerds… So, shout-out to Zach for that work.

Learn more about the Vibrant Media Lab and their projects here.

Check out the pieces below!

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 16 – Retro Games appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

In honor of Valentine’s Day and because love is fun, we’re talking romance in video games in the newest episode of The Punished Podcast. I’m talking kissing, conversation options with hearts, longing looks, fades to black, all that good stuff. 

We discuss how and why romance works in games, what the classic mechanics to relationship building are, and our favorite romance arcs. Toward the end of the episode, I even tried a little dating game among our guests—listen to find out who our most desirable bachelor is!

– Amanda Tien, Editor

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Content warning: This episode is not particularly NSFW, but it does occasionally get M-rated and has some swearing. 

Amanda: Next, let’s get into the mechanics of how romance functions when it’s there. HOW do those romances build? I’ve been thinking about this a lot ever since we decided to do this episode topic, so I want to give a little spiel and then hear what y’all think. 

In my view, there are basically three ways that romance builds in video games. 

The first is what I’ll call the movie version, which Gary called “the narrative.” There’s one main character that you’re playing, he (or she, though that’s way less statistically true) is into someone, and eventually, he builds a romance with them or has some kind of FEELINGS about it — i.e. there’s no choice here, your dude loves who he loves. You may have the option to hook up with random side strangers. But the romance is less of an action and more of something that propels the character forward. For example, this is Uncharted, many Assassin’s Creeds, Signalis, Dishonored, Kingdom Hearts, Halo.

The second is the Stardew Valley version, which Gary called “the bouquet,” where you have a few options of who you could romance, and the way that you get them to like you is by talking them every day, having the same conversation over and over again, and giving them gifts, until gradually, you give them the best gift and now boom they’re your wife. There might be times where you have to pick “the right” dialogue option as well. It’s a pretty transactional way to get to who you want to love. This is what happens in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the Persona series, even The Sims and Skyrim to a certain extent, and in dating sims.

The third is the Bioware version, where there is choice but the romance is slow burn and interwoven with the core plot. Over the course of the game, you’ll be talking to them and occasionally see a dialogue option that is clearly flirty or even has a heart option next to it, and sometimes you have to do side quests to build your relationship, and eventually, you have to lock into that romance choice before you can experience all the magic it has to offer. So this is in Bioware’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, and also Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and CD Project Red’s The Witcher 3, and some of the Life is Strange games.  

What do y’all think of those mechanics? Which ones work for you, which ones don’t? Are there are other WAYS you see romance works? 

Want more romance content? Check out Gary’s list of the best romance songs in video games!

We talked about many great titles in this podcast episode, but here were some of our favorites that we discussed passionately: 

Have other favorites? Let us know in the comments!

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 15 – Romance in Games appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Happy February, folks, and welcome back to The Punished Podcast! We’re certainly barreling through this year, for better or worse. If you need a distraction from the madness on TV, look no further than the world of video games.

For The Punished Podcast Episode 14, we’ve got a fun ~90 minutes teed up for you. In this episode, we crown our Fantasy Gaming 2024 winner (yay!) and host our 2025 draft, complete with an expanded league (double yay!!). This year’s rules follow a new dynasty format, which I do my best to outline in the episode.

I’ll keep the intro at that! Dive in and watch us compete for fame, glory, and—most importantly—precious bragging rights.

– David Silbert, Editor

Which one of our 2024 contestants—Team Amanda, Team David, and Team Sam—ended up victorious? Who will be battling it out for the crown in 2025? Find out in this action-packed, expletive-laden episode. Enjoy!

Note: We recorded this episode on January 9, days before Xbox’s Developer Direct and loooong before PlayStation’s latest State of Play. Games have since been announced; release dates have since been set. We’ve even seen a few Metacritic scores pop up. Bear all that in mind while listening!

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Who ended 2024 atop the Fantasy mountain? Check out our final standings:

Turns out, Phil’s mock reviews did let me down. Thankfully, Hellblade II didn’t stop my team from taking the crown in 2024!

Want the quick details on how our 2025 draft went down? Here’s the recap:

Curious what each team looks like, post-draft? Check out our new 2025 Fantasy visuals!

(Note: The two games in green represent each person’s official taxi picks.)

As mentioned before, several weeks have passed since we initially recorded. Here’s how our league leaderboard looks as of February 13, 2025:

Let us know in the comments!

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 14 – 2025 Fantasy Gaming Draft! appeared first on The Punished Backlog.

Happy Friday! After a week of Final Fantasy coverage for the site, we end back where we started—celebrating the PC release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

In episode 13 of The Punished Podcast, Amanda, Kei, and I dive deep into what makes Final Fantasy VII Rebirth such a special (though often frustrating) experience. Months have passed since the original PlayStation 5 release, and the gloves are off! Nothing is off limits, from the combat and characters to the mini-games, the soundtrack, and of course that wild ending.

Don’t worry! If you’re just playing Rebirth for the first time on PC, you can still listen. The first ~55 minutes of the podcast are spoiler-free, while the remaining hour and a half are for those already in the know. Regardless of your familiarity with the VII universe, we invite you to listen!

– David Silbert, Editor

I say it in the audio, but two quick notes about today’s episode:

That’s it! Have at it:

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Let us know in the comments!

The post The Punished Podcast: Episode 13 – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth appeared first on The Punished Backlog.