The Game Show

Games that weren’t supposed to scare you, but did. Jess and Break go through the creepiest moments in non-horror games: Big Boo’s Haunt, Lavender Town, Sonic CD’s hidden message, the Broodmother, the Bottom of the Well, SA-X, the Phantom Train, Skyrim’s House of Horrors, the Happy Mask Salesman, Shinra Mansion, 2300 AD, Stardew Valley’s dark shrine, the Guardians, the Rat Man dens, Ravenholm, and the Harvest Moon mad scientist with a mermaid in his basement.Also this week: EA shuts down BioWare and cancels Mass Effect, Fight Night returns, the next Xbox reportedly runs 1,200 to 1,800 dollars, Final Fantasy Resonance and Switch Sports Resort release, and Fenris sent the Pokemon save.Next week: the Halloween episode. The crew plays Phasmophobia together on air for the first time. It may be Thursday instead of Wednesday.The Game Show has been covering gaming since 2002. New episodes Wednesdays at 9 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel. Pokemon Crystal with Jess and Break streams Mondays at 6 PM Central.

Clone consoles are everywhere now. Some are good. Some are junk that looks good in a listing. Tonight Ace joins The Game Show to sort out which is which.Ace designed the Mega Amp, the audio mod for the Genesis and Mega Drive, and wrote the Sega-16 guide on Genesis hardware revisions. He spent years building arcade cores for MiSTer at the chip level, including Arkanoid, Iron Horse, Jackal and Nemesis. He knows what a real board does and what a copy misses.We get into clone hardware, FPGA, audio accuracy, and what he thinks preservation should actually look like.Support Ace: https://ko-fi.com/ace9921

What game came in the box? This week we go console by console, from the NES to the Switch 2, and pick our favorite pack-in game for each one. The classics are all here: Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Sonic, Wii Sports. So are the misfires like Keith Courage in Alpha Zones and the oddballs like Hexic on the 360 and Astro’s Playroom on the PS5. Jess makes the case for Pokémon Colosseum, Jet Set Radio Future, and Pokopia. Jack picks Halo every time. Along the way we cover PlayStation demo discs, the TurboDuo launch disc, the GBA bundles nobody remembers, and why 1-2-Switch should have been free.Also this week: Xbox says it is not for sale, Star Wars Galactic Racer is the best reviewed Star Wars game in 20 years, the Pokémon Fossil Museum heads to Denver, and 007 First Light gets free DLC.Watch Jess and Break play Pokémon Crystal live Mondays at 6:00 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel.The Game Show has been covering gaming since 2002. More at breakmanx.com.

Hot takes night. Break, Jack Burt0n, Jess, Logan, and Darria defend their spiciest gaming opinions: GameCube was the best of its generation, long games are overrated, Souls games aren't a flex, and piracy helped the industry. Plus a clip from the very first Game Show in 2002 where Break predicted Microsoft's whole playbook. News: Suda51 goes independent, Microsoft patents ads after boss fights, Witcher 3 Remastered, and GTA 6's map size.

The full crew is back and the topic is video game endings. We pick the best endings ever made, from Chrono Trigger and Super Metroid to Portal, Final Fantasy VI, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Subnautica, Alan Wake 2 and a surprisingly emotional case for Mario Kart Wii. Then a lightning round on the worst, including Mass Effect 3, Mega Man X6 and whoever that was pretending to be Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 7.News this week: the Xbox layoffs and Halo moving to Activision, Control Resonant launching tomorrow, Jess reviews the new Resident Evil movie, Sega nearly cancelled Sonic, the Tokyo Game Show recap, the DLSS 5 leak, and someone put a fruit fly brain in Minecraft.The Game Show has been running since 2002. Watch live every Wednesday at 9:00 PM Central on the BreakmanX YouTube channel, and catch the Pokémon Crystal co-stream with Jess and Break on Mondays at 6:00 PM Central. Full archive and Discord at breakmanx.com.Spoiler warning. We talk about how these games end.