Claim OwnershipThe Back Page: A Video Games Podcast
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© 2022 The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast
Description
Games media writers Matthew Castle (NGamer, Rock Paper Shotgun) and Samuel Roberts (PC Gamer, gamesTM, TechRadar) talk about video games and their years covering them professionally. Our logo is by John Strike, and our theme tune is by Barry 'Epoch' Topping (@nostoppingepoch on Twitter).
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255 Episodes
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The stack of games we've been chewing through lately, plus our reactions to the 007 First Light footage released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Our quarterly four-person draft is here! The Two Giant Men are joined by two further giant men as we compete to pick the best 11 games from some of our favourite Japanese game developers. To mix things up, expect a couple of twists on the usual draft format...This week's music is from the Street Fighter 2 soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura and Isao Abe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Back Page's road to GTA 6 – a borderline-unviable series of playthroughs of older GTA games – continues! You don't need to have revisited San Andreas to enjoy this episode. We give you a nice overview of everything going on in the story and missions. We dig deep into the game's early '90s Californian setting, the ways it pushed the GTA mission formula forwards, and why its Definitive Edition solves many of the original PS2 version's problems.This week's music is the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas main theme by Michael Hunter.A few show notes and small corrections: Samuel is wrong about GTA 4 having checkpoints. The Breaking Bad episode referenced is called 'Caballo Sin Nombre', not 'Caballero Sin Nombre'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
With 750 Metacritic 'points' each, who can pick the best 10 games based on their critical averages? A panel of judges will decide, and we'll talk about who won in a future episode! Let us know what you think of this episode format in the comments. It resulted in at least one incredibly wild choice...This week's music is from the Binary Domain soundtrack by Hidenori Shoji and Mitsuharu Fukuyama. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More pre-owned game purchases go on trial in Judge Castle's Games Court. It's a fun one! We welcome more entries for future Games Court episodes, if you have them, at backpagegames@gmail.com.This week's music is the Games Court theme by listener Adam Saucier. Cheers for your fine work! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Matthew is away, lying in a hot tub in Scotland somewhere! So, this week Samuel is paired up with his former gamesTM colleague and draft menace Dave Scarborough. You get 45 minutes of magazine memories, then around 80 minutes on the history of Ghostbusters in games (spoiler alert: many of them are rubbish).Apologies for the slight headphone bleed you'll hear in this episode – our audio engineer, Matthew Castle, is away this week as mentioned (AKA the 'Samuel did his best' excuse).This week's music is from the Ghostbusters for Master System soundtrack by Tohru Nakabayashi, as well as Ray Parker Jr. and Neil Cicierega. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The main event of the Switch 2's post-launch period is here. But does it have the juice, the sauce or the gravy? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Former gamesTM features editor Matt Handrahan is our guest this week. Having spent a decade working on GamesIndustry.biz, he's now Portfolio Director at Kepler Interactive.The most recent game he worked on? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which you might have heard of. This episode, though, gets into the far more important business of discussing the price of pints in Bournemouth's Sixty Million Postcards pub circa 2007. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A delightfully unusual episode with a guest we like a lot. Matthew Castle lore fans are in for a treat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Matthew is fetching koalas for Chvrches in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, while Samuel is having year 11 lunchtime PTSD in Sloclap's football game Rematch. It's another WWBP episode!Games discussed: Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Rematch, Date Everything, MindsEye, Pipstrello and the Cursed Yoyo, Helldivers 2 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Finally, after a belated PS5 release, we dive deep into MachineGames' 2024 GOTY contender Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The first half is spoiler-free, then the second half goes deeper into the story with some fun bonus nonsense to boot (wait until you hear Matthew's pitch for The Fugitive tie-in game).This week's music is from the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle soundtrack by Gordy Haab. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's a bloody mailbag! Please save your shrugs for the end. Thanks for all the questions, as ever.This week's music is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack by Perturbator. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
1A new Nintendo console is here. Matthew is truly submerged in the Switch 2 experience, while Samuel has merely dipped a toe in the water. Here's how we're finding it so far.This week's music is from the Mario Kart World soundtrack by Atsuko Asahi, Maasa Miyoshi, Takuhiro Honda and Yutaro Takakuwa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's Matthew hosting the pod solo this week, and his guest is Geraint Evans, formerly of N64 magazine, NGC and Gamesmaster. These days, he's working at the publisher PQube.This week's music is from the Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 + 2 soundtracks by Hideaki Kobayashi and Fumie Kumatani. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Matthew has almost finished the new Doom game, while Samuel has done about half of it – so that's the focus of this week's episode. Matthew also explains his appreciation of the new MercurySteam game, Blades of Fire, and digs deep into his never-ending playthrough of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy on Switch.This week's music is from The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy soundtrack by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
57 minutes and 13 seconds – that's the timestamp you want for all the game chatter, including two top 10 lists of the best games of 2005. Skip all the bullshit!For everyone else? Enjoy tales of college woes and secret freezer politics. Nonsense podcasting awaits.This week's music is from the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Our guest cancelled! Gah. Well, here's an episode we airlifted out of our collective asses. Hopefully it's not too bad with two days' notice to plan it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
20ish listeners' pre-owned purchases go on trial before Judge Castle, as Games Court returns!We also talk about this week's GTA 6 trailer, with a brief section on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, too. Do get in touch if you have any future Games Court entries, and we'll keep making them.This week's music is from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 by Lorien Testard. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's time for another round of listener questions as we each recover from the 50 hours of games we played for last week's episode.Did anyone need 100 minutes of mailbag questions? Probably not, but as ever: it happened.Note: we recorded this week's episode before the Polygon and Giant Bomb layoffs if the tone around the games media chatter seems off. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's catch-up time, as a spring wave of fantastic games hit at once! All of the above, plus Bionic Bay and some Metroid series chatter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Never played the Wii U but loved thos podcast. So funny and interesting.
RE That GTA Casino heist, it's a lot easier if you nip up the road to a roof that has a persistent helicopter spawn. Much, much easier with that!