Vidjagame Apocalypse

It's Black Friday here in the US, which means that at least some of you are probably already enduring a retail mosh pit to get a few bucks off a new TV. With that heady whiff of capitalism in the air, we shift our focus this week to some of the most noteworthy merchants in video games, some of whom risk life and limb to sell you stuff in combat zones. We then shift gears to talk about Pokémon Sun and Moon, Monster Hunter as a "cinematic universe," and which games you think would make perfect real-life escape rooms.

The Wii turns 10 in North America this week, pushing us to revisit a strange era of dominance built entirely on first-party games - or was it? In spite of its reputation, the Wii had a whole mess of fantastic third-party exclusives that have never been seen again, and this week we'll talk about five of our favorites with the help of Hank "Henry" Gilbert. Then it's on to talk about important stuff that matters, like the PS4 Pro, Watch Dogs 2, the NES Classic Edition, Nintendo Switch news, and the game characters you'd like to see as president.

We're just days away from the 2016 election as of this posting, and "tensions are high" doesn't seem as appropriate an assessment of the general mood as "chaos reigns." Still, we try to keep it celebratory, as Henry Gilbert rejoins the show for a look at five US presidents we can all agree on, if only because their insane policies are confined to the games they inhabit. We then move on to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Titanfall 2, Owlboy, and the games that you think would be a good fit for Nintendo Switch.

Happy Halloweek, everybody! We're... actually cutting our Halloween theme short a week early, because we only get one Episode 187, and we'd never forgive ourselves if we didn't seize the opportunity to reference an ancient Dre/Snoop song by focusing on characters who went into deep cover to investigate crime syndicates. We then move on to Battlefield 1, Civilization VI, and World of Final Fantasy before talking at length about the Nintendo Switch, Red Dead Redemption 2, and the creepiest things that happened to you while playing games.