Vidjagame Apocalypse

Competing game publishers don't often let their characters out to play with each other, but when they do, the results are usually fun. This week, we celebrate five surprising crossover cameos in third-party games, with help from friend of the show Tyler Nagata, after which we'll dig into Reggie Fils-Amie leaving Nintendo, rumors of Xbox Game Pass coming to Switch, and the worst endings you've ever seen.

When a game's "bad" ending becomes the canonical one, interesting possibilities arise as its world and heroes continue to unravel. MacWorld's Leif Johnson joins us this week to look at five sequels shaped by downer endings, after which we'll plunge straight into Tetris 99, Metro Exodus, Crackdown 3, Far Cry New Dawn, Anthem, and your all-time favorite videogame romances.

Another Valentine's Day has come and gone, so let's bury it in style with a look at five of the best romances from BioWare games, as chosen by guest star Kayla Zumbaum of PNB Podcast. Things then take an apocalyptic turn as we dig into Far Cry New Dawn, this week's meaty Nintendo Direct, and your favorite videogame simians.

Hope everyone had a happy Lunar New Year! To celebrate, we roped in friend of the show Heidi Kemps to help us dig into five games based on one of our favorite works of Chinese fiction, Journey to the West (aka Monkey, aka Saiyuki). Then we chat about Wargroove, Apex Legends, Etrian Odyssey Nexus, a VR sequel to Groundhog Day, and your nominees for the best years in gaming.

This week, we'll look at five games that gave us a single-serving protagonist, who stuck around just long enough to show us the ropes before stepping aside to make way for the real hero. Then, friend of the show TL Foster joins for an extended chat about Kingdom Hearts III, the Resident Evil 2 remake, Metroid Prime 4 switching developers, and your favorite Resident Evil/Kingdom Hearts (chains of) memories.

Wow! We somehow made it to 300 episodes! In keeping with tradition, we do away with our usual format this week and grab friends of the show Brett Elston and Dan Amrich for a heated roundtable discussion to pick the best years in gaming history. Will your favorites come out on top? Will anyone be happy with the results? Is this just five old guys getting nostalgic about games? The answers may or may not surprise you!

When long-running franchises mix it up by swapping in a different protagonist every game, it can be a rare thrill to watch your hero cross paths with their fondly remembered predecessors, for better or worse. We take a look at five of our favorite such moments this week, along with the Resident Evil 2 demo, the Pinkertons suing Rockstar, the dead franchises you want to see rise from the grave, and more!

With Onimusha and No More Heroes poised for a long-overdue imminent return next week, we spend this week’s show looking back on once-massive game franchises that have been silent for years, with help from returning guest Micah Seff. Then it’s on to New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, the latest shot fired in the Epic/Steam war, your most anticipated games of 2019, and more!

The first week of January is always a slow one, making it an ideal time to reflect on some of the games we're most excited to play in the next 12 months, with help from MacWorld's Leif Johnson. For good measure, we throw in some chat about Atlas, Monster Hunter World's crossover with Assassin's Creed Origins, and your personal games of the year.

Welcome to our sixth annual end-of-year roundup, when we gather together a bunch of games-industry guests and count down our favorite games of the year. This year's show is one of our biggest yet, weighting in at a hefty 3.5 hours and featuring appearances from Brett Elston, US Gamer's Kat Bailey and Mike Williams, MacWorld's Leif Johnson, Experience Points' Jorge Albor, Ubisoft News' Youssef Maguid, Anthony Acosta, and Thirty Twenty Ten's Diana Goodman.

Next week, we'll count down our picks for the top games of 2018 - but our rules exclude remakes and remasters, and it's been an amazing year for those. So with help from USGamer's Nadia Oxford, we're dedicating this week to five of 2018's most impressive remakes, all of which brought long-dead classics roaring back with current-gen polish. We then talk Below, year-in-review games-industry stats, and the expectations-vs.-reality of your holiday toy memories.

With the holidays looming large and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tying up everyone's Switches, GameXplain/IGN alum Micah Seff helps us celebrate by talking about five iconic killer toys that come to life and try to murder people. (It makes sense in context, we swear.) We then switch gears to talk Smash, Ashen, Earth Defense Force 5, Hades, The Game Awards, your favorite obscure game-music tracks, and a whole lot of other stuff in a nearly three-hour megashow!

Headphones are recommended for this week's show, in which VGMpire's own Brett Elston rejoins us to help pay tribute to mind-blowing music from unspectacular games. After that, we move on to Just Cause 4, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Epic's new game store, the swag you scored during Black Friday, and much more.

The holiday season is officially upon us, which means that for one reason or another, a lot of you are statistically likely to get loaded over the next few weeks. If you'd rather watch a game character get sloshed on adult beverages, there are plenty of games that'll let you get your hero drunk - and with help from MacWorld's Leif Johnson, we'll look at five of the most interesting. Then it's on to talking about Darksiders III, Sony opting for PAL versions on the PlayStation Classic, Console Wars getting adapted as a series, and the times games caused friction with family or friends.

Happy Black Friday! We understand a lot of you might be spending time with family over the long weekend - and sometimes, that time can start to feel like a pressure cooker. Why not blow off some steam by listening to us talk about five of the most absurdly dysfunctional families in gaming, with special guest Alaina Yee of PCWorld? Stick around after, because we'll jump into a lengthy chat about Black Friday deals, Fallout 76's launch, Devil May Cry Netflix news, and your favorite Stan Lee characters.

This week saw the passing of a true legend: the comics-creating, cameo-crushing alliteration aficionado known as Stan Lee. Marvel superfan Chris Baker rejoins us to celebrate Stan's legacy with a look at his greatest videogame cameos, after which we'll get into Hitman 2, the Detective Pikachu trailer, The Game Awards nominees, and the game characters you'd elect to office.

Have election-week nerves left you wishing you could simply rule with the absolute power of a despotic tyrant? Well, tough, but we've got Tim Turi on and we're talking about our five favorite playable kings, so that's something. We also get in some chatter about Deltarune, BlizzCon, and the games that took a while to really win you over.

If you've played it, you know Red Dead Redemption 2 gets off to a dramatically slow start - but in that, it's hardly alone. This week, Scott Butterworth rejoins us to look at five other games that made players wait to get to the good stuff, but ended up great anyway. And once that's done, we'll dive into our initial Red Dead impressions, the PlayStation Classic lineup, and your ideal weapons for facing down undead hordes in the Old West.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is out today, and if you're looking at this instead of playing it, it's probably safe to consider yourself our #1 fan. You're also about to hear us talk about five classic, horror-tinged games set in the wild west, with help from MacWorld editor/genuine Texan Leif Johnson. After our dual homage to Halloween and Red Dead, we'll touch on Return of the Obra Dinn, Soulcalibur VI, Fallout 76 bug warnings, and the console startup sounds of your dreams.

Pair an unstoppable hunter with one of the most threatening power tools ever devised, and you've got a recipe for sheer terror. This week, Jorge Albor of EXP Podcast joins us to talk about hulking, chainsaw-wielding badasses who chased us through classic horror games, after which we talk Starlink: Battle for Atlas, more WWE 2K19, Red Dead Redemption 2's crunch hours, and your most beloved monster protagonists.