Family Guy has skewered pop culture for two decades and I always laugh the most when the production team sets their sights on a classic video game. In Season 17's "Griffin Winter Games", Peter Griffin and his daughter Meg are captured while trespassing in North Korea and must stage a thrilling escape in the style of a nostalgic video game. Peter suggests they use Rare's famed GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 as their inspiration, and what follows is a loving tribute to the console's most beloved shooters. From the ammo count in the lower left corner of the screen... Continue reading

Nintendo's ongoing flirtatious partnership with the mobile gaming space continues with the upcoming Mario Kart Tour for iOS and Android in which the console Mario Kart experience is reformulated for a streamlined experience with microtransactions. While the company's Super Mario Run released as a one-time purchase and failed to meet sales expectations, follow up titles based on Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem included microtransactional elements and have, so far, lit up sales charts, so I'm not surprised that Mario Kart Tour follows that mold. The game is in beta for Android starting today and while players are bound by a... Continue reading

Ghostbusters seems to be poised for another resurgence as a new film is in production, the 2009 video game is rumored for a current console generation re-release, and Dan Aykroyd has written a prequel script featuring the Ghostbusters characters in high school. Now comes word that the amusement park simulation title Planet Coaster is crossing the streams with the supernatural spectacular featuring Aykroyd reprising his role as Ray Stantz who will mentor players throughout the campaign and William Atherton returning as Environmental Protection Agency antagonist Dickless Walter Peck. New rides and other surprises await in this crossover add-on. Ghostbusters fans... Continue reading

I spent a lot of time and energy both writing about and playing Ghostbusters: The Video Game in 2009, so you know that my interest is piqued when I see that Taiwan's gaming rating agency (their version of the ESRB) has rated a Xbox One version of the game slated for release (one would hope a PlayStation 4 version is in the mix somewhere too). Considering that the original developer, Terminal Reality, is long gone and the original publisher, Atari, isn't exactly a gaming powerhouse anymore, the listing credits the port job to Mad Dog Games who in recent years... Continue reading

Since the dawn of time, humanity has had a single collective dream: to have a wall-mounted shelf that resembles a stage from Donkey Kong and to stock that shelf with little 8-bit stylized figurines of Nintendo characters. Now I have achieved this dream. Gaze upon the Donkey Kong shelf and the tableau it presents with Donkey Kong himself on the top level guarding both Princess Toadstool and a classic Donkey Kong arcade machine (it lights up and plays sound, too!). Mario and Luigi are on their way to save the day and maybe earn a free game, plus Toad and... Continue reading

Today it's common for video game developers to speak up about their work either in unofficial forums such as social media or in proper interviews in publications, but thirty years ago nobody in a position of journalism power cared much about what a developer had to say. We've gnawed modern games like Super Mario Odyssey to the bone, but so many older games never had a chance to shine in a development context. One of those large voids in gaming history is the original Castlevania trilogy for the Nintendo Entertainment System as Konami isn't exactly known for keeping up with... Continue reading

I know it's hard to believe now in an age where Street Fighter fans have been able to play as M. Bison and Balrog for decades, but there was once a time when the four Shadaloo bosses were restricted to CPU control only. They were fruits you must not taste in the original release of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior in the arcades and that limitation carried over to the Super NES home version. Still, that didn't stop eager players from being absolutely sure that there had to be some hidden code that would unlock Vega, Sagat, and the... Continue reading

It's been quite a week for video game news as it feels like everyone had something to announce. Sony teased us with the first peek at the concept for the PlayStation 5, Microsoft introduced a new Xbox One S variant that lacks a disc drive, Nintendo dropped version 3.0 of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate featuring Joker from Persona 5, and Capcom baffled everyone with their confusing arcade stick home console box. Join us for an hour as we discuss all of these stories and more. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on... Continue reading

Sony gave us all a peek behind the curtain this week in an article at Wired in which the company's lead PlayStation hardware architect, Mark Cerny, explained the direction that the upcoming PlayStation 5 is headed. There's a lot of technical talk in the article, but the bottom line is that Cerny is aiming big with talk of solid state drives, 8K graphics, ray tracing, backward compatibility with the PS4 and existing PSVR, and much more. Here's a piece: To demonstrate, Cerny fires up a PS4 Pro playing Spider-Man, a 2018 PS4 exclusive that he worked on alongside Insomniac Games.... Continue reading

With virtual reality making a resurgence in the past few years with companies like Sony, Oculus, and HTC leading the modern wave of headsets, it's only natural to take a look back to the 1990s when VR first tried to break out in a major way. While Nintendo's failed Virtual Boy wasn't exactly true VR, it did gain a reputation for being something unique, special, and painful on the eyes. In this vintage article from Benj Edwards we can explore the genesis of the hardware from a little company aiming to create private PC displays all the way to Nintendo's... Continue reading

Back in Episode 278, I bought a PlayStation VR headset without really having a game plan for what to play, so Blake Grundman helped me out with some tips and suggestions on VR games I needed to try. Now that I've spent several months playing in virtual worlds, I'm ready to offer my own top picks for some of the best that the PSVR has to offer. Join us for an hour as we discuss VR experiences in Borderlands 2 VR, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Catlateral Damage, Batman VR, and plenty more. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen... Continue reading

Friend of the podcast Blake J. Harris is back on the show this week to discuss his recently released book The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality and chronicle the work that went into writing it. Join us for an hour and a half of conversation about the genesis of the project, how he was able to get in-depth access to Oculus, what happened with Facebook cut off that access, and whether or not Palmer Luckey ever got his trophies back from the Facebook campus. Plus we have some virtual reality stories for... Continue reading

Our friend Blake J. Harris, author of The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality, is coming back to the Power Button podcast soon to talk about the new book and answer all of our questions, and we want to give you the opportunity to have all of your questions about the book answered too. Post your questions and comments for Blake below as a comment before 8:00pm ET on March 30, 2019 and we will discuss them during the recording of the show. Then join us the following week to hear the complete... Continue reading

There's been a lot of Nintendo news in the last few weeks from Reggie Fils-Aime announcing his retirement to the reveal of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, so it's only natural for us to spend this week's podcast episode catching up on the happenings. Join us for an hour of discussion. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes and Google Play, 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... Continue reading

Microsoft is showing just how dedicated it is to bringing its services to what have been historically considered rival platforms with the announcement that Xbox Live is coming to iOS and Android. While you won't be playing Xbox One games on your mobile device just yet, soon you'll find mobile games using the XBL services that run underneath apps to make the magic work. Here's Tom Warren at The Verge to explain: Microsoft is bringing its Xbox Live network to iOS and Android devices. The software giant is launching a new cross-platform mobile software development kit (SDK) for game developers... Continue reading

Why didn't anyone tell me how great the Nintendo Switch pro controller is? I mean, sure, the Internet at large has been going on about it for two years now and just about everyone I know with a Switch has suggested it, but how did nobody specifically tell me to buy one and then stick with that persuasiveness until I did so? Yes, after two years of plugging away at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I finally broke down and bought a pro controller. Co-op Super Mario Bros. U... Continue reading

This week on the Power Button podcast we're discussing bad news (layoffs at Activision following record earnings) and good news (a new Nintendo Direct brings us news on all kinds of upcoming Switch games). Join us for an hour of conversation. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes and Google Play, 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... Continue reading

We took January off due to busy schedules and terrible illnesses, but we're back and ready to go again by catching up on three big happenings from last month that we have talked about had we been producing new episodes. First off we bid farewell to the recently closed Wii Shop Channel and cover one last run through the store's virtual aisles. Next we hit Bungie and Activision calling it quits as Destiny returns home to its creators. Finally, Blake Grundman takes us behind the scenes to discuss the Anthem preview event he recently attended at an Electronic Arts facility.... Continue reading

When you weren't paying attention late last year, Video Games Live released a new album, Level 6, that covers a variety of songs from games such as Tomb Raider, classic arcade titles, Pokemon, Final Fantasy X, and lots of other fan favorites, but if you want a track off the album that will give you chills, then you'll have to turn to the medley of songs from Nintendo's classic EarthBound. Featuring a rousing start with Onett's theme before segueing into "Smiles and Tears" with an operatic element then beyond, this track is going places. First you'll smile, then you'll get... Continue reading

Nintendo is not happy with the current progress of Metroid Prime 4 for the Nintendo Switch and despite the game being years into development, the company has decided to essentially scrap the existing progress and turn development over from an unnamed third-party studio back to the original creators of the Prime series, Retro Studios. It's such shocking news that Nintendo published a video of Shinya Takahashi, Senior Managing Executive Officer, explaining it all. Don't expect to see Metroid Prime 4 for another few years now. I wouldn't even be surprised if it became the next The Legend of Zelda: Breath... Continue reading