In console gaming, there is a legend known as the Third Console Curse. Most consoles are not successful enough to receive a follow-up. If they are, then a third console is still not guaranteed. It is a hard industry not only to break into, but sustain a market share in. Yet something happens with the third console every time. It fails to meet the company's initial goals. Maybe it still sells fine, maybe the console has a wonderful library of games. Even if that is the case, the company loses market share and is in a worse spot at the end of the console's life than they were going into it. It could be arrogance from success. It could be a lack of perspective from being too used to success. Maybe it's just rotten luck. But it's consistent.
These are games that are still stuck in my memory today. Many highly rated games are good, and I've been revisiting them, but these are the ones that come to mind first when I think of 360.
I went over the Metacritic list of best DS games and made my own list with comments. There's certainly many more great games I didn't mention for various reasons.
I didn't play many of the most celebrated games at the time, '90-'94. I played my own thing which was brawlers, action games and a few sports and board games. My friend Mad Krammer (MK), who I still play with today, and I would get together and play whatever we had, which was, at first, a Genesis. We started going to flea markets and eventually picked up a SNES and then he ended up with some old computers from his job and we started in on PC gaming. Here's a year by year list of what I remember playing back then.
I remember this year mostly for the being disappointed with the World of Warcaft MMO. I wanted another another strategy WoW. But there was also the release of the DS, which got me back into handheld gaming, and cueing up for my first midnight release for Halo 2. The rest of the world was buying GTA: San Andreas and Pokemon FireRed/Leaf Green, numbers 1 and 2 in sales respectively. Half-Life 2 was a notable winner on Metacritic. Here's some stuff I played and want to play.
2022 was...better? Maybe? We got some great games anyway, and the backlog ever giveth, of course. First we'll take a look at the games I beat and bought and then we'll move onto the Golden Hippo Awards!
“And now, the most anticipated epic adventure of the year will never come to a theater near you. Final Fantasy VII.” And so began my interest in RPGs. That commercial blew my 12-year-old mind back in 1997. Besides the impressive animations shown (which we would later learn were only cut-scenes), I was intrigued at seeing that we somehow jumped from Final Fantasy III on the Super NES to now VII on the PlayStation. “What manner of sorcery is this?”, I wondered.
Another year down! What? You don't want to talk about 2021? Can't say I blame you. How about games? First we'll take a look at the games I beat and bought and then we'll move onto the Golden Hippo Awards!
Welcome to another banger of an episode of Nerds Without Pants! We hope this episode pushes all of your buttons, because that’s the topic of the day: BUTTONS! It will make sense when you listen to it, we promise. We also cover a handful of recent releases, and Serious Sam steps into the cage with Turok Evolution!
It’s the spoopy time of year, which means it’s time for Halloween Havoc on Nerds Without Pants! We are once again joined by show co-founder and horror writer Rob Ottone to talk about game characters and creatures that scare us. Also: Resident Evil 4 takes on Dead Space 2 in the steel cage!
Put on your footie pajamas and pour a bowl of your favorite sugary cereal, because this week the Nerds Without Pants are turning their favorite games into imaginary Saturday morning cartoons! Don’t worry, we’ll explain what that is if you’re a young’un. Angelo joins us for this super fun show, so let’s get to it!
Welcome to another edition of Nerds Without Pants! Well, we asked for you guys to send us questions, and you did not disappoint. Enjoy this jam-packed deep dive into the Pantsless Ones, with some fun asides and some behind the scenes tea.
Welcome back to Nerds Without Pants! This week we go over what ended up being a really tricky Stage Select, spoil the hell out of Twelve Minutes (check the timestamps in the notes), and have a battle of Odysseys in a steel cage match. Enjoy!
Welcome, to another Nerds Without Pants that, despite hardly having any listener interaction, still snuck past the three-hour mark. I don’t know, y’all. This is the reality you have created for yourselves. We won’t be held responsible. You fell in love in the first place.
It’s another massive episode of Nerds Without Pants. Don’t blame me, this is all Justin’s fault. No time to get pithy, here we go!
On this episode of Nerds Without Pants it’s all about family, for reasons. Turns out there are some really interesting examples of family dynamics in video games, so this is a pretty good episode I think. Tell the people you love that you love them.
Mega Man 2 started as a side project that Capcom allowed artist Keiji Inafune’s team to work on during their downtime between higher priority projects. Much of the game's design included leftover ideas that didn’t make it into the inaugural entry. However, a few gameplay refinements and an incredible soundtrack combined to bring forth a classic that still attracts new fans despite being released over 30 years ago. Not bad for a side project.