Have you ever seen lots of people talking about a video game series that they absolutely love but you just can't see the appeal? On this week's podcast we're discussing games that everyone else adores but just aren't for us. From Animal Crossing to LittleBigPlanet to Borderlands to Persona, nothing is safe. Remember that we're not overly negative or angry people, so we fully understand that these games just aren't for us, and we're alright with that. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes and Google Play, toss... Continue reading

The Borderlands series has done very well for itself in the past decade, but surprisingly it hasn't come to a Nintendo platform until today's announcement of the Borderlands Legendary Collection which bundles the modern console remasters of Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel with all included expansions (minus Commander Lilith and the Fight For Sanctuary) and new optional motion controls. The physical game card version of the set will require a hefty download, too. It's coming in May 2020 for $49.99 along with a bunch of other Switch releases of existing 2K Games titles including BioShock and XCOM, but... Continue reading

Sega's Sonic CD is remembered today for many things including its divisive soundtracks and the time travel mechanic that turned every stage into three stages, but I would say that the most memorable addition to Sonic's world is the creation of Metal Sonic. Sonic's robotic rival gave him someone he could evenly spar against with speed versus speed. The character is designed to look menacing and just plain painful to touch with his sharp edges and glowing red eyes. What went into designing Metal Sonic? Over at Shmuplations there are translated interviews with Metal Sonic's creator. No, not Dr. Robotnik,... Continue reading

As the world takes a lockdown pause to deal with COVID-19, this week on the podcast we're talking about self-isolating and spending that extra time on playing video games such as Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. This week has been such a long month. 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... Continue reading

Out here in the real world people across the planet are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as the coronavirus has us all practicing social distancing, self-isolation, quarantine, and/or working from home depending on your circumstances. Traditionally packed highways are nearly empty, people are starting to lose their jobs as business close for an indefinite shutdown, and we're all left to stay at home and avoid public spaces and gatherings so as not to contract the illness. These are uncertain and perilous times. You'd think you could escape into a video game for a while and leave it all behind, but... Continue reading

The coronavirus has been spreading around the world and inciting fear and anxiety in everyone who keeps up with the news of the pandemic, so while it's understandable that many video game players were looking forward to some escapism with the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, this year's E3 has been called on account of COVID-19. Yes, the latest major gathering of people to be cancelled because of the coronavirus is E3. Jason Schreier at Kotaku has the story. “After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry—our fans, our employees, our exhibitors... Continue reading

On this landmark 300th episode of the Power Button podcast, Blake Grundman and I explore the impact of Super Mario Bros. 3 on its thirtieth anniversary launching in North America, and while that's all well and good, we start off with a sidequest into a long-awaited event that I'm excited to share with all of you. 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... Continue reading

Sega has taken an active hand in the past decade in keeping its popular Genesis titles available for increasingly modern platforms, both as part of multi-game disc collections and à la carte downloads. The latest game to make a return appearance is 1992's Sonic the Hedgehog 2, one of the best titles in the franchise and in which Sonic joins with his new pal Tails to take down Dr. Robotnik's plans of world domination using his Death Egg weapon. While originally meant to spur sales of its 16-bit console, now that Sega is platform agnostic, anyone with a game system... Continue reading

ROM hacks of classic retro games have come a long way in the past two decades as fans have reworked old favorites into new creations. Capcom's 1989 hit DuckTales for the Nintendo Entertainment System is one of the console's classics, and while it was given a modern upgrade in 2013 for DuckTales Remastered on then-modern platforms, it remains based on the original game which in turn is based on the 1987 animated series. Now that the 2017 DuckTales reboot is solving its own mysteries, it's only fair that someone would rewrite Capcom history by replacing the game's protagonist, Scrooge McDuck,... Continue reading

Today being the thirtieth anniversary of Nintendo's landmark Super Mario Bros. 3's release in North America, I cannot let the day pass without looking back on one of the defining games of the 8-bit era. I first became enamored with the adventures of Mario and Luigi in 1986 and over the next several years, Nintendo became my childhood religion with the pair of plumbers at the top of the holy ladder. I watched the Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon while eating Mario fruit snacks and wearing my Mario t-shirt, scribbling in my Mario notebook with a Mario pencil (with... Continue reading

Ask any of us who grew up in the 1980s with a Nintendo Entertainment System controller in our hands and we'll all tell you the same thing: that controller is iconic. Sure, it's been surpassed by the controllers that came after it (the Super NES controller made it immediately obsolete), but there's a certain special something about that solid rectangle with the red buttons that evokes all kinds of nostalgia. Nintendo has sold its classic back catalog through download services on its modern consoles for fourteen years now dating back to the original Wii, but players have relied on the... Continue reading

Capcom adapted their popular Mega Man games for the Nintendo Entertainment System into Game Boy counterparts that mashed up elements of the first four games in the series in unexpected ways allowing for, say, Cut Man and Heat Man to exist in the same game. Want to shoot Fire Man's weapon at Quick Man? Go for it! Mega Man V, however, was an entirely new adventure with original elements, and after that the handheld series went on hiatus. No Mega Man VI. Certainly not a Mega Man VII. And definitely not a Mega Man VIII... unless you count this bootleg... Continue reading

As we close in on our landmark 300th episode, this week Blake Grundman and I take an hour to tie up some loose ends still lingering from the holidays. My girlfriend and I bought classic Nintendo Entertainment System controllers for the Switch and put them through their paces on a variety of NES games, and we're getting into Star Trek: Bridge Crew for the Sony PlayStation 4. She's getting into Destiny 2, too. I also have a lot to say about the surprisingly decent Sonic Forces and my amiibo obsession continues. Finally, we turn our attention to Zen Studios and... Continue reading

With the holiday season of 2019 becoming a hazy memory, Blake Grundman and I catch up on our December doings with a look at all of the games we played during our time off. New games, backlog games, and everything in between is up for grabs in this seventy-five minutes of discussion of games such as Shovel Knight: King of Cards (and the new amiibo!), Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Borderlands 3: Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn, and much more. We also take a sidequest diversion into a fun little retro game shop that I discovered while... Continue reading

We've just come out of a series of major twenty-fifth anniversaries for some major video game releases, so for this week's podcast we're turning the calendar back to late 1994 to remember the launches that would CHANGE EVERYTHING in the gaming world: Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country for the Super NES with its rendered visuals that would hold back the side of advancing consoles for another year, Sega's 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis that landed with a thud and began the company's protracted downfall, and Sony's entry into the business with the first model of PlayStation. The 90s had firmly... Continue reading

Special Christmas encore of our popular holiday episode! It's the holiday season which means that it's the perfect time for us to dedicate an episode of Power Button discussing video games that include Christmas elements such as music remixes, holiday weapons, festive missions, and appearances from Santa Claus himself. There's some deep cuts mixed in here with the mainstream titles; we cover everything from Christmas trees in Sonic Adventure's Station Square to the special Christmas cheat code in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie's Double Trouble to Banjo-Kazooie's Freezeezy Peak to the special holiday demo of Jazz Jackrabbit to Sega's limited... Continue reading

My amazingly creative girlfriend is making new gaming holiday decorations to fill our home again this season, and to pair with last year's Borderlands Claptrap stocking holders this year she's taken an ordinary, drab Christmas village set with its sleep and heavenly peace and given it a Mercenary Day makeover to make it look as if it popped out of the annual Borderlands Christmas event. Check out the photos of a tucked-in winter wonderland turned into something that would make Mr. Torgue proud. EXPLOSIONS AND CEL-SHADING, YEAHHHHHH! Borderlands Mercenary Day Village Continue reading

I rented my share of dud video games for the Nintendo Entertainment System when I was a kid, but sometimes I'd rent a game I couldn't quite crack, and my need to figure it out would drive me to rent it again and again. Sometimes it's for compellingly bad reasons like with what happened with Back to the Future Part II and III, but sometimes it's for good reasons. Consider 1989's Clash at Demonhead that was somewhat ahead of its time in terms of level progression, power-ups, and storyline. This was a game that played out more like an episodic... Continue reading

Landmark anniversaries can really sneak up on you in the video game industry, particularly when you forget sometimes that consoles once often launched a year or more earlier in other regions than the one you call home. Consider Sony's original PlayStation which landed in North America in 1995, but released in Japan on this day in 1994, so it's time to celebrate the console's twenty-fifth anniversary (and I'm sure we'll do it all again next year for the American date). Game Informer has a massive cover story by Jeff Cork chronicling the life and times of the PS1 and beyond... Continue reading

While it's fun to talk about video games that have major anniversaries this month (both Donkey Kong Country and the Sega 32X turn twenty-five years old), it's seemingly less fun to reminisce about the anniversary of the creation of a regulatory body, but thanks to author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation and friend of the Power Button podcast Blake J. Harris, we're going to have a good time exploring the genesis of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Harris has written a seven-part oral history article... Continue reading

I can understand why it's a challenge to make a video game based on Doctor Who that honors the spirit of the source material. The Doctor abhors guns, so a shooter is out of the question. You could make a platformer because the Doctor and his/her companions certainly do a lot of running, but there's not much of the show's soul in a jumpfest. Match-5 puzzle game? Well, now you're not even trying! Thankfully, the folks at the BBC, PlayStack, and developer Maze Theory have seemingly cracked the puzzle of what it takes to make a solid Doctor Who game... Continue reading

Here's a fun blast from the past courtesy of @90sManiax on Twitter. Acclaim published a series of poor-to-lackluster games based on The Simpsons in the early 1990s for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Super NES, Sega Master System, and Sega Genesis, and here we have an advertisement for several of the titles featuring original Simpsons animation as Bart tries to avoid his chore obligations in order to play. The three games advertised here - Bart vs the Space Mutants, Bart vs the World, and Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly - were all semi-popular in their day based solely... Continue reading