Vidjagame Apocalypse

Metal Gear turned 30 last week, so we're devoting the first half of this week's show to ranking our favorite Metal Gear Solid games, with special help from Henry "hEnereyG" Gilbert. With that out of the way, we move on to Splatoon 2, Toy Story in Kingdom Hearts 3, and the musicians you'd want to perform songs in video game sequels.

With War for the Planet of the Apes hitting theaters this week, it seemed like as good a time as any to rope in Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe and launch our own exploration of the simian perspective with five games that let us play as hulking, violent apes instead of puny humans. We then move on to talking about Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Gorn, Hoobastank's frontman singing Sonic Forces' theme song, and games you've finished, but wish you'd spent more time with anyway.

Plenty of games like to litter their worlds with hidden items and secrets for you to ferret out, but how many of those actually come with their own self-contained storylines? Quite a few, it turns out - but with the help of former IGN editor Vincent Ingenito, we'll go through five of our favorites this week. Then it's on to Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Pac-Man Vs. coming to Switch, and movies you'd like to see get their own janky adaptations. (Thanks to John Spezzano for this week's Top 5 suggestion!)

It's the last day of June, so let's look back on a frankly stellar six months of game releases and pick five of our favorites. (Remember that these are just our opinions, which of course means they now have to be YOUR opinions, too.) Once you're done fantasizing about slapping the smug grins right off our dumb faces, why not listen to us talk about Valkyria Revolution, the SNES Classic, Nintendo Badge Arcade's final update, and your favorite games of 2017?

It's not unusual for comedians to star in games, but there was a time when games could sell entirely on the strength of a comedian's personal star power. Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe joins us this week to walk through five times when comedians played themselves in games, after which we dig into ARMS, Cave Story+, Friday the 13th's new apology content, and the games you wanted to see at E3, but didn't.

E3 2017 is in the books, and the usual duo of Chris and Dave are joined by Talking Simpsons on Patreon's Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey as each dude delivers their top five games of E3!

We're on the eve of yet another E3, so now seems like a good time to get Hank "Henry" Gilbert back in the studio to help us talk about some of the most memorable celebrities to have graced the show with brief cameos. Then it's time to move on to Tekken 7, Hover: Revolt of Gamers, Pokémon news, and your favorite experiences with in-game chat.

Creepy, quasi-religious cults seem to be all the rage in games this year, with heavy hitters like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and now Far Cry 5 using them as major plot points - so this week, erstwhile hosts Brett Elston and Henry Gilbert rejoin the show for a look at five of gaming's most unsettling and influential cults. Then it's time to dive into Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Friday the 13th, Danger Zone, Sonic Mania, and the arcade games you wish had gotten a home release.

This week, we finally give recurring guest Bob Mackey a topic fit for his Retronauts chops: ancient arcade games that were "ported" to consoles, but became completely different games in the process. Then it's time to go aggressively modern with Rime, Friday the 13th, Far Cry 5, Red Dead Redemption 2's delay, and the characters you'd love to shove into fighting games.

Injustice 2 hit this week with more power than a locomotive - and with Sub-Zero as a DLC cast member. So to celebrate, we've invited Heidi Kemps of gaming.moe to help us count down our picks for the five best guest characters in fighting games. Then it's time to dig into Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Injustice 2 (of course), rampant speculation about Zelda on mobile, the Rap Rabbit Kickstarter, and the board games you'd like to turn into video games.

We've got a bona fide indie developer in our midst this week, as Theresa Duringer of Temple Gates Games joins us to talk about her new mobile adaptation of strategy board game Race for the Galaxy. She also helps us talk about five games that began as fan projects or unofficial mods, only to earn the eventual blessing and/or backing of the companies whose work they were celebrating. Then it's onward toward NBA Playgrounds, Strafe, Deadly Premonition becoming a board game, and your favorite experiences playing games in 3D.

With Austin Powers recently turning 20, we undertake a fan suggestion this week and look at five awful, awful games based on Mike Myers movies... with the help of our old pal Dan Amrich, who won the internet this week by co-creating the stellar Star Wars/Beatles mashup album known as Princess Leia's Stolen Death Star Plans. Then it's time for a spirited discussion about Prey, Call of Duty: WWII, Darksiders III, the New Nintendo 2DS XL, and the series whose gameplay you'd mash together if you could. Theme song by Matthew Joseph Payne http://matthewjosephpayne.bandcamp.com/ Break song is Dianoga by Palette-Swap Ninja http://www.paletteswapninja.com/ Haunting and beautiful New Releases Theme by David B. Cooper.

This week sees the release of not one, but two games that mash up popular franchises to create strange and wonderful new hybrids of complementary gameplay - so Henry Gilbert joins the crew to count down a list of five other games that merged existing gameplay formulas to create new crossover adventures. We then switch gears to Puyo Puyo Tetris, Dragon Quest Heroes II, What Remains of Edith Finch, Outlast 2, Night Trap, and the game characters you felt bad about killing.   Theme song by Matthew Joseph Payne. Break song is Reincarnation by Yoshiaki Fujisawa. Closing song is Slow Burn by Girls Who Care. Haunting and beautiful New Releases Theme by David B. Cooper. Follow us on Twitter @VGApocalypse!

This week brings a storm of retro-styled games and revamped re-releases, but before we get to that, Michael Grimm joins us for a look at five games that let you choose paths of (relative) nonviolence, incapacitating and outwitting your enemies instead of straight-up killing them. Then it's time to dig into Full Throttle Remastered, Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy, the Disney Afternoon Collection, our collective disappointment over the unexpected demise of the NES Classic, and the characters you'd want to see work together. Question of the Week: Has there ever been a game character you regretted killing? Theme song by Matthew Joseph Payne. Break song is The Disney Afternoon Theme by The Disney Afternoon Studio Chorus. Haunting and beautiful New Releases Theme by David B. Cooper. Follow us on Twitter @VGApocalypse!

It's always fun when someone appears on VGA for the first time, and this week, longtime community member and Anime Streaming Showcase creator Curtis "zabu_san" Stone joins us for a very serious discussion of mascots who habitually carry their partners around on their backs, operating in a state of perpetual symbiosis that you probably thought was totally normal for animals or elves or whatever. The topic was, of course, inspired by this week's release of Yooka-Laylee, which headlines our new releases chat along with Mr. Shifty. It's all we can do to squeeze in some quick Scorpio talk, after which we look at a few dreams you've had about games. Question of the Week: Which two game mascots would you like to see work together? Theme song by Matthew Joseph Payne. Break song is You've Got A Friend as performed by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Haunting and beautiful New Releases Theme by David B. Cooper. Follow us on Twitter @VGApocalypse!

Persona 5 is here at last, and given that the series has always relied heavily on concepts and symbolism from Jungian psychology (among other things), we thought it'd be fun to dig into five games that deliberately used Carl Jung's ideas to create vibrant, dreamlike stories filled with sinister Shadows. Things then get less esoteric as we look at Persona 5 itself (with help from host emeritus Henry Gilbert), Parappa the Rapper Remastered, Destiny 2's release date, Mad Catz's demise, and your experiences trading in games.

With at least two of last year's biggest games getting big-time DLC this week, it seemed like as good a time as any to take a look - with the help of Telltale's Nathan Ortega - at some of our favorite DLC expansions of all time. More than downloadable extras, these added new stories to amazing games and sometimes even improved the overall experience - and once we're done getting nostalgic about them, it's time to talk about Kingdom Hearts, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, Rain World, Narcosis, the Destiny 2 reveal, and your favorite game trilogies of all time.

It's Mass Effect week, so we honor its legacy by starting off with a list of some of the biggest, most important trilogies in gaming - ones that told overarching, three-part stories that stuck in our minds for years afterward. Then it's time to finally dig into Mass Effect: Andromeda, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, the unexpected return of the Floigan Bros., and your favorite Mass Effect romances.

Blaster Master Zero's recent arrival on Switch revived a classic tale of a boy and his frog, so this week we let nostalgia be our guide and put together a list of five of gaming's greatest green amphibians. We then move on to Danganronpa 1-2 Reload, Switch sales, the upcoming Steven Universe RPG, and the sleeper games you've either recently discovered, or wish others would.

Following the surprise of 2010's Nier getting a sequel with this week's release of NieR: Automata, Heidi Kemps rejoins us to talk about five games that were largely ignored at release, only to find an audience years later and come surging back to popularity. Then it's on to extended Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Switch discussion, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Disc Jam, Oculus Rift's price drop, and your favorite launch games of all time.