Them Sweet Game Boys

Them Sweet Boys are on a quest to kill chaos as they take on Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins, an incredibly lame celebration of 35 years of Final Fantasy. What a great premise! A Final Fantasy soulslike made in collaboration with Team Ninja; sign me up! But sadly, Square Enix and Team Ninja couldn't deliver, and instead made...this...We do our best to sing the few merits this game has, but overall this is a listen instead of play scenario. 

It's a full on mega episode as we talk about three big topics! First, Joe and Ethan discuss the September direct in full and dissect it for Mario goodness, as well go off on tangents about Octopath Traveler II and Kingdom Hearts III. Secondly we discuss some very recent news with the first trailer for the Mario movie, where we discuss Chris Pratt's Linda Belcher like Mario voice. Finally, we get into baby's first graphic design program with Mario Paint and really dig into the fun of creating on the SNES. It's a banger of an episode; give it a listen!

Just in time for the month of spooks, Ethan and Joe actually got together in person to play this interactive narrative game. It's the last day of summer at Hackett's Quarry Summer camp, and the counselors get marooned for one more night without the kiddos. What should be a night of young lust and memories is instead a night of horrors! You get to play the horror movie director and can either guide your characters to safety, or make the perfect 80's style slasher movie. Can our survive their last night of summer camp, and guide their horny teenage counselors past beasties, ghoulies, ghosts, and some seriously pissed off country folk? Or will they lead them to inadvertent slaughter? Give it a listen, it's a pretty fun episode!

PS. Sorry for the mix-up with the files. For the second episode in a row I uploaded Joe's audio only, but took me a couple of days to catch it this time. Whoops!

Just in time for the month of spooks, Ethan and Joe take on another horror game. Those sweet boys are off to summer camp to dig into The Quarry, Supermassive's interactive narrative homage to 80's slasher and monster movie films. It's a game where you play the "director" in choosing the fate of the camp counselors at Hackett's Quarry, a summer camp beset by beasties, ghosts, and some god ole boy hunters. Help your characters survive the night, or create your slasher masterpiece and let them all die; either way, Supermassive manages to tell a pretty fun story! 

In this episode we have a duology of NES dropping block puzzlers, from the fondly remembered Dr. Mario to the much less remembered Yoshi!  As an added bonus, we wrap up some early 90's Mario cameos on the Gameboy, some of which are just plain weird! Here are the other five games being covered.

• Baseball (Gameboy)
• Alleyway (Gameboy)
• Tetris (Gameboy)
• F1 Racing (Gameboy)
• Qix (Gameboy)

*Sorry about the snafu! Here is the correct audio file*

Joe and Ethan plunge into Elden Ring , the 2022 Soulsborne sensation from From Software. Two sweet tarnished boys journey to the Lands Between to purloin the great runes from Queen Marika's awful, no good family, and along the way discuss topics such as the open world formula, rank our favorite and least favorite foes, and our general opinions on the scope and difficulty of the game. Overall, it's an episode whose strength befits a crown! Also, stay tuned for a bonus addendum episode with Joe Morris's opinions on the game, because there is just so much to discuss!

A couple of tarnished but sweet boys journey to the Lands Between to wrest the great runes of the Elden Ring from Queen Marika's awful, no good children. Ethan and Joe graft their opinions together to make a pretty good banger of an episode, delving into our opinions on the lore and narrative of Elden Ring, sharing our favorite moments, locations, and bosses, as well as how we feel about an open world soulslike. Stay tuned for a bonus episode to get Joe Morris's opinion on this mega-game!

Ethan and JM- X face our fears and climb our way out of planet ZDR in Metroid Dread, the most recent 2D Metroid developed by Nintendo. We first discuss the complicated development history and the turbulent Metroid fanbase which made this game's development rather unique, before moving into a break down of the game's narrative, its frenetic gameplay, and the hard as nails boss battles. We also take our jab at the big question: is this game the next big step for Metroid? Does it push the franchise forward or merely use the same old tricks? Give a listen to find out!

For being such a popular video game character, Mario as a transmedia property really died after the early 90's. In this episode we are going to look at as many of the cartoons and programs that we can find that featured the plumber, from weird game shows and variety children's programs, to the more nostalgic and memorable cartoons. The programs and episodes discussed on this program are...

• Saturday Supercade-Donkey Kong in New Wave Ape
• Super Mario Super Show- Bad Rap (oh yeah you get to hear Lou Albano rap)
• King Koopa's Kool Kartoons
• Super Mario Kids Clubhouse
• Super Mario Challenge- Katie vs Alan
• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3- Do the Koopa
• Super Mario World- Rock TV
• Mario Ice Capades

Vacation at Dinosaur Land is over! This episode wraps up our discussion with Super Mario World, and covers discussion from World 2 up through Special World. Make sure to listen to part 1 first!