Some video games are better the second time around when you know the plot twists and most effective strategies. On this week's episode we're discussing games so nice, we played them twice (or three times, or four, or ten...). Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button... Continue reading

We're back after an extended medical hiatus! Join us as we discuss what we've played during our time away such as Little Kitty, Big City, the re-released Aero the Acro-bat, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, and much more. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline... Continue reading

We wrap up our Virtual Boy discussion with the games you can't play and a few finished games that have leaked out over the years. Join us! Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us social... Continue reading

Enker. Punk. Ballade. To long-time Mega Man players who have fond or frustrating memories of the Game Boy line of blue bomber adventures, the names of Dr. Wily's special Robot Masters designed specifically to eliminate Mega Man are not easily forgotten. Newer fans of the franchise probably have little idea who these characters are or from where they come now that the original five Mega Man games for the Game Boy have landed on Nintendo Switch Online's Game Boy app, so it's time for a little Robot Master 101 introduction course in the form of a video created by PTB... Continue reading

When Blake Grundman visited me in April he finally had the chance to play a real live Nintendo Virtual Boy from 1995 and my collection of sixteen games, so on this week's episode of the podcast we go game by game to get Blake's takes on the experience. Did Galactic Pinball live up to expectations? How bare bones is Mario Clash really? Does he want to flog Golf? And is Nester's bowling really so funky? Join us and find out! Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and toss... Continue reading

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is making a splash on the Nintendo Switch, but those of us who remember it from twenty years ago as a GameCube game can add some nostalgic fun with a printable slipcover for the Switch game that rebrands it as a GameCube release. Pop over to the My Nintendo loyalty program, spend thirty platinum points, and download the PDF to print, fold, and enjoy. It's not as slick as the free preorder bonus version given away internationally on professional glossy stock, but at least it's something. Continue reading

Thanks to some new legal requirements from the European Union, Apple is now required to allow emulators in its walled garden of an App Store worldwide. This opened the door for retro console emulation to the masses spanning the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 through Nintendo's iconic hardware and beyond up to the Sony PlayStation Portable. On this week's podcast we're discussing what this means, what your options are, and why it'll be a long time before you can fire up a PlayStation 3 game natively on your iPad. Please emulate responsibly! Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen... Continue reading

I recently went on a bit of an eBay binge to soothe the sting of some bad news, and while searching around for keywords of interest I came across these cute little Nintendo Entertainment System game paks printed up in miniature with familiar, nostalgic labels. They are not functional games , but displayable artwork. I bought a few to decorate my themed collectibles on shelves — Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Ghostbusters, and Darkwing Duck — and they really add some unique flare. Go check out Lithos3D's eBay page and see what's on offer. There's also miniature Atari 2600 cartridges... Continue reading

Held over for one more weekend, it's Blake Grundman live and in person with me at the microphone, and this episode we have some more shopping purchases to share before we tear into a topic near and dear to Blake's heart: Star Wars. Kick back with us for a while and let's have some fun. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember... Continue reading

We have an extra special episode this week! Usually Blake Grundman and I record the show from our respective secretive lairs at opposite ends of the United States, but we're celebrating the end of my twelve long chemotherapy treatments for cancer, so the time was beyond right for Blake to jump in his car and come speeding across the nation to hang out at the Press The Buttons Compound for a few days. For years I've told Blake about the amazing retro indie toy, video game, and comic shops in Florida, so I took him on a series of day... Continue reading

Following on from last week, back in 2018 we did a two-part look (Episodes 269 and 270) at video games remade with new or changed features such as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening gaining a color expansion as Link's Awakening DX. I don't know if you've noticed, but video game publishers are still doing this sort of thing six years later, so it's time to take another look at the topic. This one is so large that we're breaking it into pieces; Part 1 was released last week and this is Part 2. Download this week's episode directly from... Continue reading

Back in 2018 we did a two-part look (Episodes 269 and 270) at video games remade with new or changed features such as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening gaining a color expansion as Link's Awakening DX. I don't know if you've noticed, but video game publishers are still doing this sort of thing six years later, so it's time to take another look at the topic. This one is so large that we're breaking it into pieces; Part 1 is available right now with Part 2 coming next week. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the... Continue reading

I sent my international buyer, Blake Grundman, overseas to acquire some rare gaming antiquities for me. That is, he picked up some fairly priced amiibo and games that are hard to find and not so fairly priced here. This leads into a discussion on how else to play retro games whose corporate ownership has turned to dust over the decades, and that's how we get into hacking devices to run emulators. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of... Continue reading

We were fortunate enough to get advance access to the new Digital Eclipse Gold Master series of documentary releases, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, so for this week's episode of the podcast we discuss the title, its interactive exhibits, and the 42 games and light synthesizers included. From Attack of the Mutant Camels to Hover Bovver to Tempest 2000, there's quite a collection of history here. Join us and find out what all the fuss is about. Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is available now on all major platforms. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player... Continue reading

Developer Insomniac Games suffered a data breach last year that exposed much of the company's upcoming plans and scrapped ideas, one of which was the existence of a live service multiplayer Spider-Man game for the Sony PlayStation 5 in which five players each take on a character from the Spider-verse such as Venom, Silk, or Spider-Gwen to bash the Sinister Six. The project, entitled Spider-Man: The Great Web, was cancelled, but today a trailer for the game was posted online. There's discussion on ResetEra as to whether this is a proper announcement trailer meant to be seen by the public... Continue reading

2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a real "local plumber makes good" story that the media loved to frame as making up for the 1993 film loosely based on happenings in the Mushroom Kingdom, but if you weren't around back then, you may not understand what all the fuss was about. That's where Dan Larson steps in. Digging into what made Super Mario Bros. such a troubled production is a very deep rabbit hole, but Larson condenses the key points down to a half hour tale of discarded drafts, inexperienced directors, and dissatisfied actors for an overview of what... Continue reading

My wife has a knack for baking special birthday cakes. In the years we've been together she's made me a Triforce cake, a Kirby cake, a Borderlands vault symbol cake, and a special cake for Homer Simpson to ruin on Maggaggie's birthday. This year she outdid herself though. Taking inspiration from @giganticbuddha's famous comic about Princess Peach telling Mario not to come to the castle, my wife baked a real life version of the princess's terrible cake. This is about as in-jokey as it gets because anyone who didn't play Super Mario 64 will be lost as to why this... Continue reading

We're strolling on the shady side of the tracks this week as we focus on some favorite retro ROM hacks and the baked-in achievements that go with them. All of this talk of emulation inevitably leads us to touch on the Nintendo/Yuzu Switch emulator lawsuit, too. Join us and bring your ROM patching tools for some new takes on old fun. ROM Hacks Mentioned In This Episode The Real Ghostbusters Remastered Sonic 3D Blast Director's Cut Mega Man X3 - Zero Project Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 Color Edition Mega Man World 5 DX Smash Remix Ghostbusters - Special... Continue reading

When we were recording our podcast this week, Blake Grundman described our grab bag of topics as a hodge podge. That phrase knocked loose an old childhood memory of a Commodore 64 game called, fittingly enough, Hodge Podge. A quick Internet search found that it's been archived and you can play it online in a browser. Hodge Podge is a primitive educational vocabulary game created by Leonard Bertoni & Rich Scocchera for preschool children that maps each key on the keyboard to a specific related animation and, sometimes, music. Press H and you'll be greeted with art of a horse.... Continue reading

We have a hodge podge of smaller topics for you on this week's podcast as we touch on the recent Nintendo Direct, Microsoft taking select Xbox games to other platforms, retrogaming emulation made easy, the Borderlands movie trailer, and much more. Join us for another reach into the grab bag! Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can... Continue reading

Nintendo released a batch of unexpected classic video games from developer Rare this morning for the suite of Nintendo Switch Online apps in North America. Subscribers can now enjoy Snake, Rattle, & Roll and R.C. Pro-Am for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Killer Instinct and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs for the Super NES, and the underrated Blast Corps for the Nintendo 64. This is the first time many of these games have been re-released at all. I'm happy to see them back, particularly Blast Corps which I sank a lot of time into back in the late 1990s but could never fully... Continue reading

I'm not a fan of video gaming rumors anymore. A product is released when it's released, and I have enough going on in my life that I can wait for it. Do I want to play the next Super Mario game? Absolutely. Do I have other things to do in the meantime? Also yes. That's why I'm not that disappointed when I read a report from Kyle Orland at Ars Technica indicating that Nintendo is now targeting the first quarter of 2025 as a release window for its successor to the Switch. He cites a number of sources backing this... Continue reading

Of all of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance games that could be remade for Switch, I really didn't expect 2004's Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but here we are twenty years later and the game is due out at the end of the week. Previews so far have focused on the new levels and the two-player mode, but I'm excited about the soundtrack. The GBA version sported some fun music that was held back by hardware limitations, but now, on the Switch, the orchestra can run wild. Consider the game's title theme, for instance. On the GBA you can recognize snippets... Continue reading

It's time for a brief history lesson. Back in 1994, Nintendo began creating video gaming content for the BS-X Satellaview satellite modem add-on for the Super Famicom. This device connected to the console's AUX port and allowed players to download games and other content via satellite. Much of the content was recycled from retail Super NES releases, though some of it (such as an Excitebike sequel featuring Mario or a remake of the original The Legend of Zelda) was brand new. Curiously, some of the new content took the form of expansions of retail games. Consider F-Zero, for instance. The... Continue reading