KnockBack: The Retro and Nostalgia Podcast

A weekly, retro-and-nostalgia-themed podcast co-hosted by brothers Colin and Dagan Moriarty. Video games, television shows, movies, books, toys, comics, and more... this podcast covers it all. New episodes post each Monday. To get every episode a week early and ad-free, as well as gain the ability to submit questions and comments to be read on the show, please consider supporting the show on Patreon: patreon.com/laststandmedia We wanna make the podcast even better, help us learn how we can: https://bit.ly/2EcYbu4 For advertising opportunities please email PodcastPartnerships@Studio71us.com Privacy Policy: https://www.studio71.com/us/terms-and-conditions-use/#Privacy%20Policy

Episodes

#287 | The Last of Us: Part II

April 16, 2025 • 434 mins

It may only be about five years old, but The Last of Us: Part II is quite easily one of the greatest games of all-time. Thus, it not only deserves its own episode of KnockBack, but a seven-ish hour one, the longest show in Last Stand history to date. Divisive even before it came out -- but absolutely dripping with style, message, and storytelling -- TLoU2 is a tale about endless violence and cyclical revenge, the kind that you simp...

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#286 | Final Fantasy V

March 19, 2025 • 163 mins

In 1992, Final Fantasy V came to Super Famicom in Japan, but in the west, the seminal JRPG would remain a mystery for years. In 1999 (via PS1!) English-speaking audiences would gain access to the game for the first time (unless you played fan translations via emulator, of course), and since then -- whether on GBA, PC, phones, or more recently modern consoles -- FFV has always held an interesting place in the pantheon of great Final...

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#285 | Ex Machina

June 12, 2024 • 126 mins

When a movie invokes our obscure hometown of Brookhaven, Long Island, you know we have to give that film the proper KnockBack treatment. Dagan's been smitten with Alex Garland's 2015 directorial debut Ex Machina recently, and in a strange twist-of-fate, I (Colin) have actually seen this flick, a relative rarity. Dag and I both sat down to watch it again, though, and deliver this episode of KB to you today on the tail-end. Garland's...

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#284 | Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

May 29, 2024 • 114 mins

It's been a while since we've covered a game on KnockBack, so we thought we'd return with a bang. Long-requested as a target of our show, The Lost Legacy is a peculiar 2017 release that fits somewhere between an expansion and a full game, and it doesn't star Nate and Sully, but rather Chloe and Nadine, an interesting pairing to be sure. Made quickly by a spin-off Naughty Dog team and received well upon launch on PS4, The Lost Legac...

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#283 | 'Do A Kickflip!' Skateboarding with Dagan and PJ

May 1, 2024 • 160 mins

PJ returns to KnockBack to talk about all things skateboarding. Long Island's favorite skate rats chop it up about Tony Hawk, Supreme, injuries, favorite tricks and the infamous 'vert button'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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#282 | Our Parents

April 17, 2024 • 184 mins

We're settling back in from Sacred Symbols 300 live in New York City, and the experience has us (The Brothers Moriarty) feeling nostalgic, which is a good thing for our retro-and-nostalgia-themed show. We're particularly sentimental about our parents, who both attended the show, and who -- at 73 years old, both -- have always come through for us, even if the path wasn't always linear, or even clear. We love making fun of our mom an...

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#281 | 'Sega, Skateboarding and Shenanigans' The PJ WIlliams Episode

March 20, 2024 • 206 mins

Dagan's best friend and Colin's other older brother finally arrives on the KnockBack scene to discuss skateboarding, video games, and growing up on the sometimes shady streets of Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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#280 | Starship Troopers (Book + Film)

March 6, 2024 • 143 mins

With all of the hullabaloo surrounding Arrowhead's hit PS5 and PC game Helldivers 2, we figured we'd delve into its most obvious inspiration: Starship Troopers. Most people know Starship Troopers as the 1997 Paul Verhoeven sci-fi flick, but it's actually much more than that. It all started as an award-winning novel written back in 1959 by an author named Robert Heinlein, and strangely, the film and book couldn't possibly be more di...

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#279 | Trying (and Largely Failing) to Make a Top 10 NES Games List

February 28, 2024 • 134 mins

For this week's KnockBack, we thought we'd do something a little bit different. A major fuel source for the origins of our podcast back in 2018 was our shared love of the NES: The hardware, its games, and the community that's long surrounded it. So we thought we'd delve back into that subject matter by each constructing a Top 10 NES Games list and then trying to fuse them together, a task we almost immediately abandoned when we rea...

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#278 | Jaws

February 7, 2024 • 112 mins

1975's Jaws is a seminal work in the thriller genre, and it was somehow delivered by an overwhelmed, overworked, and over-his-head Steven Spielberg, directing only his second theatrically-released film. With a bloated budget more than twice as high as originally anticipated -- and filmed on-location with great difficulty, sending it more than three months beyond its planned schedule -- Jaws had everything working against it. But in...

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#277 | Our Introduction to Drinking

January 24, 2024 • 131 mins

While we certainly neither condone nor encourage underage drinking, the reality is that both of us did plenty of it in our heyday. Indeed, drinking before you're 21 in the US is basically a rite of passage for generations of young people. (And yes, the drinking age should be 18.) And while we absolutely don't endorse our past behavior, we thought we would have some fun talking about our respective introductions to drinking: Trying ...

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#276 | Mama Moriarty Joins the Chat

December 31, 2023 • 157 mins

For our 'holiday' episode of KnockBack this year, we thought we'd do something special. As such, please welcome our mom to the show, BettyAnn Moriarty. The reality is this: Our mother comes up on the show constantly. In fact, if you guys are on social media, you may even interact with her. Needless to say, she's one of the most special people in our lives, and thus, we thought we'd take some time to reminisce, tell some old stories...

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#275 | Final Fantasy IV (Redux)

December 17, 2023 • 186 mins

For the Brothers Moriarty, Final Fantasy IV -- or Final Fantasy II, as we once knew it on SNES way back when -- is a uniquely nostalgic product. Upon its release in the west, we played the game together, often with me (Colin) sneaking into Dagan's room after I was 'put to bed' so I could watch him conquer the tale. Thus, we eagerly revisit this all-time JRPG classic in KnockBack style, but it's not the first time we've done so. Lon...

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#274 | A Brotherly Inquisition

December 3, 2023 • 111 mins

For this week's episode of KnockBack, we thought we'd do things a little differently. Indeed, there's no specific topic to discuss per se. Instead, we thought we'd ask each other a few random questions about our respective childhoods to see where the conversation might lead. So let's get into the nitty-gritty about Dagan's most memorable youth sports triumph, Colin's frightened remembrances of the unnecessarily scary Unsolved Myste...

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#273 | Family Gatherings

November 19, 2023 • 137 mins

While KnockBack typically revolves around the video games, films, TV shows, and so on of the past, some of the most-popular and most-requested episodes of the show over the last six-ish years relate to Moriarty family stories. Today's release is one such episode. Using a certain recent wedding as a jumping-off point, we thought we'd go a level or two deeper and discuss the physics and chemistry of a typical family gathering in the ...

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#272 | RoboCop

November 5, 2023 • 109 mins

Paul Verhoeven's 1987 dystopian sci-fi film RoboCop is considered more and more of a classic the further we get from its release year. Indeed, a lot of the ongoing revision pertaining to RoboCop has to do with its subject matter: Mega-corporations, militarism, the use of police force, and a mighty thick layer of satire that heavily lampoons American culture, past and present alike. On the outside, Peter Weller's portrayal of the ti...

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#271 | Avatar

October 22, 2023 • 101 mins

Only a couple of months from when this episode of KnockBack launches, an Avatar-themed AAA game will launch from Ubisoft-owned studio Massive. And -- as you may already know -- I (Colin) am a fan of Massive, as I love their Division series. So when I heard they were making a Far Cry-like title that happens to be Avatar-themed, I knew I had to play it. But there was a glaring problem: I didn't know the source material. KnockBack see...

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#270 | MTV

October 8, 2023 • 134 mins

If you're an American gen-xer or millennial, there's a better-than-decent chance you were heavily influenced by MTV growing up. Launched in the early '80s, culturally crescendoing in the '90s, and still highly-relevant into the 2000s, MTV's brand of so-called 'music television' helped define a succession of generations' musical tastes, fashion, and the wider spectrum of entertainment full-stop. Today's episode of KnockBack is dedic...

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#269 | Halo 3

September 24, 2023 • 136 mins

If you're an older player of video games, you know that 2007 was an historically-insane year for the medium. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Super Mario Galaxy, BioShock, The Orange Box, God of War II, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and Mass Effect -- amongst others -- all launched within 9 months of each other. And then there was Halo 3, arguably the king of them all. Halo 3 is the Xbox brand's single best-selling game by a mile, and i...

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#268 | Card Collecting

September 10, 2023 • 94 mins

Welcome back to KnockBack! This week, instead of focusing-in on a specific game, movie, TV show, or whatever, we thought we'd do another one of our reminiscing episodes instead. Thus, today, our focus is card collecting. At different stages of his childhood, Dagan collected Star Wars cards, Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, and even caught the Smurfs bug. Colin, meanwhile, went through three distinct card-collecting phases: Sports...

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KnockBack: The Retro and Nostalgia Podcast

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#287 | The Last of Us: Part II

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}#286 | Final Fantasy V

#285 | Ex Machina

#284 | Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

#283 | 'Do A Kickflip!' Skateboarding with Dagan and PJ

#282 | Our Parents

#281 | 'Sega, Skateboarding and Shenanigans' The PJ WIlliams Episode

#280 | Starship Troopers (Book + Film)

#279 | Trying (and Largely Failing) to Make a Top 10 NES Games List

#278 | Jaws

#277 | Our Introduction to Drinking

#276 | Mama Moriarty Joins the Chat

#275 | Final Fantasy IV (Redux)

#274 | A Brotherly Inquisition

#273 | Family Gatherings

#272 | RoboCop

#271 | Avatar

#270 | MTV

#269 | Halo 3

#268 | Card Collecting

Popular Podcasts

#287 | The Last of Us: Part II

#286 | Final Fantasy V