The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast

Music podcaster and former games journalist Jon Denton is our guest this week! Hear about Jon's journey from gamesTM to being pals with The Weeknd.This week's music is from the Super Mario World soundtrack by Koji Kondo.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A massive year for games, a bleak year for at least one giant man. One of our oldest and most popular podcast formats is back, more than two years after our 2016 episode!This week's music is from the Yakuza 0 soundtrack by Kensuke Inage and Yoshihiro Arai. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's another mailbag. Topics discussed: Mr Kipling's Angel Slices, why Tomb Raider keeps needing reboots, Nintendo's struggles on the GameCube, Steve Martin and matching sandwiches to video games.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you enjoy this episode, consider supporting us so we can make more Two Giant Men episodes just like it!As voted for by the listeners, we revisit Rockstar Vancouver's 2006 ode to high school life – as well as our own cursed teenage years.This week's music is from the amazing Bully soundtrack by Shawn Lee, which we neglected to talk about in the episode. Thanks to Michael 'BanyaBat' for the edits.These are the two articles mentioned in the episode – Samuel Horti's Bully piece and Game Informer's Bully 2 piece. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.