Arrggh! A Video Game Podcast from The Waffling Taylors

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Discord server, Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page.

This episode sees Anthony of the Capes on the Couch podcast join us. We talk about his show (which you should definitely listen to), ‘previously on’ mode, RPGs and forgetting what to do, the recent TMNT releases, reaching level 99 too soon, airborne controllers, and profanity generators.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

We talk with Anthony about his podcast (which deals with exploring the mental health aspect of comic book characters), and as such need to bring up mental health points. We can't say whether anything in the episode will offend, but what we will ask is that you listen responsibly.

But also that you look after yourself and, if you can, someone else too. Please consider getting help if you need it.

Show Notes

Anthony of the Capes on the Couch podcast joined us, and we wanted to take a few moments to discuss both his podcast and mental health. Mental health is something which is important to both Jay and Squidge, and they take it very seriously.

If you need help, please go get it. There's no shame or stigma attached to it.

Anthony describes the show as:

Which, you'll agree, is an amazing setup for a podcast. And a very, _very_ important topic to discuss. And it's such an important point that Jay and Squidge wanted to explore it for a big enough portion of the episode.

Along the way, Jay talked about the wonderfully creepy world of deep fakes. He brings up a fantastic video by Corridor Crew where they took all of the appearances of their lawyer on their podcast, fed them into Descrypt - to build up a machine learning model of his voice - then used GPT3 to write a script for a speech, and had Descrypt create the audio for the speech. Effectively, they had a set of machine learning tools generate a full speech, and delivery it to the rest of the company.

It's wonderfully dystopian.

And the reason that Jay brought this up because, looking at his podchaser profile Squidge has edited almost two weeks of continual content with Jay's voice in it.

Recent Games

After almost 40 minutes of discussion on comic books, superheroes, and mental health

If you need help, please go get it. There's no shame or stigma attached to it

Anthony brought us back on topic, and with the Recent Games segment.

The Recent Games segment will not be new to listeners, but in case you're new to the show here's how it goes: we go round the table and discuss one or more game that we've been playing recently, and whether we think it's worth the listeners checking it out. We continue to do this until we've run out of games to discuss.

And this episode was no different.

Anthony's Recent Games

• Super Mario Odyssey
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
• Asphalt 9: Legends

And when discussing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, both Anthony and Jay talked about a "Parent mode" or "Previously on... mode"

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Discord server, Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page.

We were joined by Raina of The Ancient's Den this week. Raina has recently released an HD mod for the Dreamcast version of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, and it's bloody impressive. We talk zombie feeding simulators, the entire Legacy of Kain series, and about Raina's favourite controllers

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

Because we're talking about some of the entries in the Legacy of Kain series - a series of games about vampires going around and doing what vampires do - we'd recommend that you skip this one if you have little ones listening, or are in a space where listening would be inappropriate.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

This week's episode starts with Squidge in the Nosgoth underworld... or was it Brighton?

But before long, the boys where joined by Raina of The Ancient's Den, the person behind the Soul Reaver HD Mod, and all-round amazing person.

And Raina takes us back in time to the late '90s - gaming magazines, demo discs, and incorrectly spelt main characters - when bringing us up to speed about how they got involved with the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This was a time of internet cafes - remember them? - and floppy disks - remember THEM?! - and before widespread use of email.

Jay also shares a story of him playing around with the MP3 encoder on his home computer so that he could MAYBE load a single MP3 onto a single floppy disk.

And Squidge tells us that he first played Resident Evil 2 as a 9 year old.

Before we could talk about the HD mod, Jay asked Raina to...

Get Control of Yourself

This is a segment that we like to do every so often, which is based on a tweet from SinceSpacies - who is an absolutely amazing person, by the way. Seriously, go follow him on Twitter

The idea here is that we want to know which is the best and which is the worst controller of all time.

Raina's Worst Controller

Raina chose the Xbox 360 controller.

Raina also dislikes the Dreamcast controller:

Raina's Best Controller

And both Raina and Squidge agree that the PlayStation controllers from DualShock on-wards are fantastic for FPS games:

The HD Mod

Raina describes the origins of the mod by taking us back in time to the release of the original Legacy of Kain on Dreamcast:

Strangely enough, during the process of porting to Dreamcast, the graphical assets were reduced by quite a lot - meaning that the "inferior" release on the PlayStation TECHNICALLY has better graphics than the Dreamcast version.

And Raina is calling this a "remaster" (or sorts) as the mod contains MUCH higher resolution textures which are swapped out, at runtime, by the Flycast emulator for Dreamcast.

You should certainly take a look at the comparison screenshots on the project's website here: https://www.sr1hdremaster.com/screenshots

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more ...

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Discord server, Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page.

Moonwalking to the fridge, Memento, video games, kitties, The Lonely Island of programming, spoilers, whether Tom Holland knows he's Spider-Man and silliness. That could only mean one thing: G has returned to the show. But what do these things have to do with video games?

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

This episode has a few poop jokes in it, all around the 10 minutes and 30 second mark.

A misquote from the 1982 classic Blade Runner ("am I lesbian") at 12 minutes and change could cause issues for some listeners if they are listening with little ones.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

Seeing as how it being several weeks since Jay had done the intro, he decided that he would be in charge of intro-ing the show, and he did a pretty terrible job of doing it - as always - but it wasn't just Jay and Squidgey in this episode, as they were joined by G (aka #dontCallMeAudrey).

Considering that it had been almost two years since G was last on the show - his last appearance was in episode 92 "Would You Kindly" from October 2020 - and a lot of amazing things have happened in his life since he was last on - including having a new little one, and her taking her first steps ON THE DAY THAT THE EPISODE WAS RECORDED! How cool is that?

Nothing in the episode will compare to that news, and it will be all downhill from that moment. So strap yourselves in, folks.

And even though G had not been on the show for a long time, he fell right back into the format without any issues

Less than 10 minutes into the episode, the boys started to have an existential crisis:

The Cat Game

Of course the hot topic of the month came up: The Cat Game - aka Stray - and the boys had a lot to say about it: from the fact that G has been playing it with his eldest, to the fact that Jay remembered being interested in it because the first ads for it played up the Kowloon Walled City based design of the game world.

And when talking about mutual friend Sakura, and how she should definitely play this game - seeing as she is a rather big fan of the feline species - G had this to day:

Indeed.

...

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

Have you ever played The Cat Game? Does it fill you with the cutesy-wootsy fuzzy-wuzzies? What about that rather dark storyline? What about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, have you played that? Is it really that good?

Let us know on Discord, Twitter, Facebook, or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

• Join our Discord server and be part of future episodes
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Classic REbirth mod
• G on Twitter

And have you left us a rating or review? We really like to hear back from listeners about our show, so check out https://wafflingtaylors.rocks/our-podcast/ for links t...

First of all, we'd like to thank the amazing yurricanes for working with us to create the featured image for this episode. I think you'll agree that it's an amazing piece of art, and you should definitely check out their work.

We'd also like to thank Georgie (aka ChapSketch) for working with Squidge on the episode artwork for the entire New Cupboard of Shame series. Head on over to Georgie's Etsy page to commission some work from her. You really should, as she's blooming brilliant.

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Discord server, Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page.

Squidge invited Jay to make his first appearance on the Cupboard of Shame, and he brought along a white whale of sorts. What do Arnie, Sly Stallone, and trashy 80s cyberpunk movies have in common? And why is Jay recommending running, head first, into walls? This CoS will answer those questions and more.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

Squidge was fully in charge of hosting, producing and editing this episode. As such, he decided to leave the few swears in the episode without bleeping them. This was done for comedy reasons, as we felt that there is very little in the episode which could offend most listeners.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

Squidge wanted to take a shiny new look at The Cupboard of Shame. The difference being that he wanted to invite some familiar voices onto the show, one at a time, and discuss one game that they want to jettison into the Cupboard of Shame. This being the fifth episode in the new series, he invited Andrew "Podcast Collector" Dickinson to dispatch something into the devious - and totally real cupboard - cupboard.

As a quick reminder, Squidge describes The Cupboard of Shame as:

Previous Entries into the Cupboard of Shame

The Cupboard of Shame reboot has only seen two entries so far:

• Chief Problems decided that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim needed to be stored behind the walnut doors of destiny in episode 136
• Lulu wanted to jettison Chaos Legion to the nether realms of the electronically challenged cupboard in episode 138
• Sean wanted to yeet Risk of Rain 2 into the underbelly of the cupboard in episode 139
• Ginger wished to send Final Fantasy X-2 into the depths of cheap MDF that is the cupboard in episode 140
• AndrewD was on the fence about Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days and whether it should have been in the Cupboard of Shame, in episode 141
• JonnyG spoke about the weird-a-thon that is Deadly Premonition is episode 142

Prior to the Cupboard of Shame reboot, Squidge had challenged both G and himself to put some titles into the Cupboard of Shame. The titles that they chose include:

• Iron Man the Movie Video Game
• WET
• Rambo: The Video Game
• Crackdown
• Final Fantasy XIII

You can hear their discussion on these games (and a few more) in episode 47: The Cupboard of Shame - here's a link to that episode. All of the "classic" Cupboard of Shame episodes - aka before Squidge's 2022 sexy reboot - can be found here.<...

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Discord server, Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page.

The 30th anniversary of Sonic 2day is upon us this month, and we asked a few friends to talk about their memories of the landmark title. This week, we talked with GamerJason, White Mage, and Nezzalonius about what comes to mind when they think about Sonic 2, whether Sonic Team have a trademark on the Casino Levels, and slipping and sliding everywhere.

psst. this is the first in a series of four episodes on Sonic 2's 30th anniversary. Be sure to check this page to see the other episodes in the series when they drop.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Sonic 2sday - Tuesday November 24th, 1992 - aka the worldwide release of Sonic 2 on the Genesis - we wanted to create a very special episode of the podcast, and it ended up being so long that we split it into four. And this is part three of that series of special episodes; with part one having released last week

• part one
• part two

We wanted to create an episode which would have us interviewing some amazing people that we know from the podcasting and video content community, and we wanted to talk with them about their memories of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Genesis/ Mega Drive; and reach out, we did.

As you can see from our players section - psst. if you're not reading these show notes on the website, then you're missing out - we reached out to some amazing folks. In fact, we got so much content that we've had to split this special episode into two separate episodes, each with two parts. In this episode we talked with:

• Gamer Jason (aka one of the hosts of What's Wrong With Wolfie?)
• White Mage
• Nezzalonius

Assisting us with this episode was Russell, an artificial intelligence that Jay may or may not have sunk several years of his life into creating, for the specific purpose of making everyone's lives easier. Russell took hosting duties for this episode - you'll see why as we work our way through the series.

Full Show Notes

All the details on the questions we asked, the format we took, and the answers that our amazing guests gave can be found in the full show notes, we definitely check them out here.

Do you remember the first time that you played Sonic 2? Was it on Sonic 2sday? Have you checked out all of the content that our guests create? You totally should. Let us know on Discord, Twitter, Facebook, or try our brand-new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

• Join our Discord server and be part of future episodes
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Support us on Ko-Fi
• GamerJason's Links:
  • Twitter
  • What's Wrong With Wolfie?
• White Mage's links:
  • Trich Comics
• Nezzalonius' links
  • Twitter
• Sonic 2sday

And have you left us a rating or review? We really like to hear back from listeners about our show, so check out https://wafflingtaylors.rocks/our-podcast/ for links to services where you can leave us some wonderful feedback.

The Waffling...