Digimon Battle Spirit with Joshua Moore (Morphenomenal: How the Power Rangers Conquered the World)

Digital monsters, handheld mayhem, and nostalgic button-mashing collide! Prepare to jack into the Digital World as Play Comics takes a pixelated punch at Digimon Battle Spirit on the Game Boy Advance. This portable fighting game promised to capture all the Agumon-punching, Gabumon-grappling action of the beloved anime and manga series, but did it deliver a champion-level experience or just leave us saying “that’s not very digivolving of you”?

Joining us for this pocket-sized digital duel is Joshua Moore, the brilliant mind behind Morphenomenal: How the Power Rangers Conquered the World. Together, we’ll explore whether this GBA gem successfully translated the franchise’s monster-battling essence into something more substantial than a Rookie-level disappointment, or if it left players feeling like they’d been banished to the Dark Area of gaming history.

So dust off that Game Boy Advance, charge up your Digivice, and prepare for some serious handheld heroics! Will Digimon Battle Spirit prove itself worthy of the Crest of Gaming Excellence, or will we discover it’s about as useful as a chocolate D-3 device? Time to find out if this digital adventure was truly the digimon we deserved, or just another case of “close enough” licensing magic!

Learn such things as:

• Can a game be both the best and worst thing ever?
• How do you connect different eras of a series that are only loosely connected anyway?
• Will Chris ever be able to make a Digimon episode without bringing up Pokemon?
• And so much more!

You can find Joshua on BlueSky @joshuamoore.com and of course his website JoshuaMoore.com and of course check out his book Morphenomenal: How the Power Rangers Conquered the World.

If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicscaston Twitter and in the Play Comics Podcast Fan Groupon Facebook.

A big thanks to the Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective and Fun and “Games” for the promos today.

Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who insists that Digimon must me real and that’s what’s messing up his tech.

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