Games We Grew Up With

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY, GWGW! It's our third birthday (how did that happen?!?), so we decided to put out a special Non-Rose episode that throws wayyyy back in our hosts' gaming lives!

Where else can you go to turn $700 into $10,000,000 than VEGAS, BABY? Or, more often... where else can you go to turn $700 into a sad $0 and end up on a bus out of town than VEGAS, BABY?

Welcome to Vegas Dream, where all your slow-moving text, badly-r...

Ever wonder what would happen if a group of video game developers were told to just go wild and make the weirdest, most confusing, least story-driven, crazy game possible, preferably including a man-child that grows and shrinks, Alice in Wonderland-style, and occasionally shouts out a ride-able set of stone letters spelling "RAGE!"?

Neither did we! But here we are, and we all get to experience the ... experience that is SUPER BONK ...

Kick, punch, it's all in the mind! Well, I mean... that's ONE example of this genre, but this time instead of Um Jammer Lammy, we're focused in on the behemoths of the rhythm game genre from about 2005 to 2015... Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DJ Hero, and all those rock 'n' roll, guitar 'n' drum, rhythm-music games!

These games were the life of the party for a good chunk of years, and as it turns out, might still be fun to play today! O...

Three, two, one... it's space-lights out and space-away we go! It's time to rev up those hovercar engines, blast around the semi-epilepsy-triggering track, bounce against strangely rubbery walls, and entertain futuristic billionaires by racing other poor unfortunate souls... and occasionally blow up! That's right, it's F-Zero for the Super Nintendo!

This one is a doozy, for many reasons, not least of which is that as it turns out,...

Rise and shine, dear listeners - rise and... shine. It’s another Random Non-Rose Episode! This time we are delving into Half-Life 2 for the PC! Looking back at a game many have said is one of the greatest games of all time is a challenge, but our intrepid hosts have their crowbars ready.

Host Chris leads the squad in a live recording to talk about Gordon Freeman’s second (NEVER THIRD... we see you, Valve... we see you...) adventure ...

Float like a butterfly, sting like ... an unresponsive SNES Classic controller that disagrees with your assessment that you threw an uppercut instead of a body punch! That's how the phrase goes, right?

We're in the ring for this one, the squared circle, not hitting below the belt, getting saved by the bell, rolling with the punches, givin' em the old one-two, not throwing in the towel... you see, because we're BOXING!

From Gabby Jay...

The more you know... about how we play co-op games, the more surprised you are we haven't hurt each other in real life!

This very special episode of Games We Grew Up With is all about those magical moments on the couch, across the country, or both, when you get a group, perfectly in sync, working together on a puzzle, thinking as one... and then one person sets everyone else on fire, triggers a trap, and kills the whole group.

If you...

Thank you Link! But our Princess is in another castle! ...wait, that doesn't sound right... wrong Princess and wrong mostly-silent Protagonist trying to save both the world and her! This is another LEGEND OF ZELDA, and this time we're finding A LINK TO THE PAST (for the Super Nintendo)!

All the classics of Zelda games show up here... Link, Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce, a shortage of Rupees, a shortage of Heart pieces, long and wind...

2022... What a year it was for Games We Grew Up With! We laughed, we cried, we screamed at entirely-inappropriate ratings predictions for SimCity 2000 (or at least, some of us did...)

From Mario 64 to Final Fantasy VII, General Chaos to Starcraft, Crash Team Racing to Super Metroid, we covered 12 new (old) games, across GameBoy, Sega Genesis, Windows, Super NES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1. They weren't all winners (lookin' at you,...

Well well well, if it isn't the most aptly-named game of the show's history! Both for game content as well as what it took to even get the two hosts to be able to play (and stream) it to all our viewers on Twitch!

This one digs deep into the archive, and pulls out a simple, complex, flame-torching, nut-punching, chaotic combat scramble that we're told ostensibly had some plot sitting in there in between melees and grenade launches.

...

"GWGW, reportin' for duty!" It's time, it's time, it's finally time... IT'S RTS TIME! In this episode, the crew dove deep into the world of Terran, Protoss, and Zerg, in STARCRAFT! We collected minerals, we learned hard lessons about what dropships are, and we figured out that... well, the Zerg are just kinda weird and gross!

Even better, we were able to have a 4-player online multiplayer game, coast-to-coast, and kick the snot o...

Alpha, get me some teenagers with attitude!

Well, we may not be teenagers anymore, but I think anyone who has listened to even part of an episode of this podcast knows there's plenty of attitude to go around. And hey, if you check the show's title out, we DID grow up, way back when! And the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were a formative part of that growing up.

Whether the TV show or the SNES game, you've gotta enjoy Rita Repulsa, ...

Forty and three-quarters... a perfectly reasonable episode number, right? Really, if we're talking about "Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade INTERmission", I think 40.7 is quite appropriate!

And who's that voice? That's not Host Chris! Well-spotted (heard), dear listener! That's Producer Kyle, dropping in to share some of his thoughts along with Host Katie on this special episode... so pull out your rotten fruits and veggies an...

It's here! It's here! 2 years later, and it's finally here!

It's FINAL FANTASY VII DAY!!!!

Rejoice, for it is a day of celebration across the entirety of the pizza. Err, across the entirety of Midgar. We laugh, we organize materia, we (*cough* Host Katie *cough*) snicker when one of the leading ladies gets violently murdered before our very eyes, and we SNOWBOARD!

Final Fantasy VII, the game that spawned your very favorite...

HOOOOOJJJJOOOOOO!!!!

We're back... but NOT back from the past... not quite yet! It turns out that, since Final Fantasy VII was the main game that this podcast was started for, our intrepid hosts have more than a few things to say about it!

A few weeks ago, we all sat down to record the "Rose-Tinted Glasses" segment of this episode, and when we went back to listen to it, we realized that it was the length of a full episode! And ...

Power! Unlimited power!

Or at least, that's what the Empire would have you believe. Join them in TIE Fighter, and work to exterminate all that Rebellion scum.

Even more importantly, this episode we talked about this game LIVE, and streamed it to YouTube (where the extended cut is still available)! But just for you, our dear listener, we've made a handy podcast version, and distributed it to all your favorite platforms. Don't ...

3, 2, 1... race! Get your boost on, drift around the corners, and take out Mario, Bowser, and Peach! Oh wait... no... hold on, that's... Coco, Pura, and Dingodile! Why, that must mean that we're in the world of CRASH TEAM RACING!

Why yes, you brilliant clue-deducer you, we ARE! We've gone back to the Playstation 64... err, I mean, Playstation 1, and we're hoppin' into our four-wheeled carts of fury to race to save the Galaxy fro...

Samus is a WHAT? Well, if you're out of the loop, you'll just have to listen in and find out... as the GWGW crew discuss Super Metroid for the Super NES! Exploring the wonders of the MetroidVania genre with one of its earliest and best variants, Hosts Chris and Katie wind their way back and forth (and back and forth, and back and forth...) through the planet Zebes, trying to plow through aliens, monsters, bosses, movie references...

WhatwhatWHAAAT? No rose segment? Wasn’t that just a weird one-off thing that Host Katie did for Jak 3?

Why no, dear listener, it was NOT! Our "Random Non-Rose" series continues, this time with BOTH of the hosts, playing through Dr. Mario… err, I mean, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, for the Sega Genesis!

Not familiar? Well, think of Tetris… make it two-player… get rid of the weird shapes… fill it with awkward portraits of e...