Abnormal Mapping

We close out the year by playing one of the most infamous games we’ve ever covered, a game that has been a running joke and shorthand for bad game for nearly twenty years. And yet, do we find the judgment of history fair? Do we believe in redemption for a certain blue hedgehog and the anime princess who loves him? We’re going to try our best, as we finally pla...

We’re joined by Dia Lacina once again as Ryo continues the next leg of his quest to track down Lan Di, his father’s killer. What strange challenges will he find in China? How does Yu Suzuki follow up one of the most ambitious, incredible games of all time? We find ourselves surprised at almost every turn as Shenmue II goes big and goes small and goes adventuring!

Thank you so much as always for listening, please rate and review the...

One of the hot new releases of … wait, 1999? That can’t be right. Oh, it’s a fan translation. One of the hot new fan translations hitting the inter-oh I’m being informed the fan translation is from three years ago! How embarrassing. Well, we’ve been meaning to play this one for a hot minute, and when Em finally tried it they were so instantly in love with it they insisted we cover it for the podcast. So we did! Turns out, we had a ...

Sometimes you decide to finally pick up one of those games you’ve always heard of but never got around to, the curiosities that you are pretty sure aren’t must plays, but stick in your brain anyway. Some might argue this has been the history of Abnormal Mapping at large! But this month we do one of the epitomes of this style of game as Em chose one of the big PS2 curiosities from the era of “I can’t believe they localized that!”

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Jackson is joined today by official Final Fantasy Correspondant Austin Walker to talk about Final Fantasy XI - specifically the base game and Rise of the Zilart. It’s been a busy MMO summer and we simply needed to get it out of our systems and into microphones somewhere. Please enjoy this three hour tribute to a game that’s still around and still good as hell.

Thank you so much as always for listening, please rate and review the pod...

Em is back from the month off to talk about the joy of a kind of cheesy mystery with a great sci-fi premise as we get to live out our Star Trek: The Original Series dreams by lecturing ancient peoples about how our modern world view is clearly the best one. This sounds like it’s selling The Forgotten City short, but I promise it isn’t, we really liked this game. Sometimes good things are also kind of silly things, is all, and we de...

This month it’s just me, Jackson, being joined by Crystal to play Citizen Sleeper. Em is currently in Hospital after major surgery and so I’m taking over and organizing the podcasts while they recover! Please send them well wishes. It’s time to talk about RPG systems, and the strange act of critiquing leftist video games that you mostly agree with. I think this is a good discussion about a fun game and I hope everyone enjoys it!

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We enjoy one of the major modern attempts at making a Pokemon-style monster collecting and battling RPG with Cassette Beasts. We talk about surprising scope of the world, the intense battle system, what your numbers say about your priorities, the weirdness of dating mechanics, and much more! This game was a great surprise and a huge delight, so please check it out!

Thank you so much as always for listening, please rate and review th...

We find ourselves doing grunt work for Atrus once more as our favorite self-published author and god of his own realms begins reaping what he’s sown over the last two games. We solve some puzzles, enjoy Brad Dourif, and talk about the kind of guy who keeps going around birthing entire worlds. Exile was good fun, happy to dip back into the world of Myst once again.

Thank you so much as always for listening, please rate and review th...

We leap back in time to the Mega Drive to talk about two action classics back when action games meant jumping and avoiding and not perfect parries. Not exactly divisive that we enjoy these types of games, but the generational split is very real as we talk about these two classics of game. Join us, for a walk down memory lane (Sega edition).

Thank you...

We finish our long Final Fantasy adventure by playing Square’s largest single player Final Fantasy yet. But does size equal quality? Does it equal ambition? We have many thoughts about this and about where the entire Final Fantasy VII Remake Project has gone and is heading in this enormous podcast about an equally enormous game. After dozens of hours, we are left with one simple question: w...