We did it! We listed every PS2 game!
No, I didn’t forget that we have this last part of the Nerds Without Pants PS2 list special to release! I’m just…really lazy, y’all. But here it is! Not sure if we’ll ever do another one of these, but there’s something kinda fun about just going through an entire console library, so never say never.
Justin's sister has some THOUGHTS.
Well hello there! Are you missing the Nerds Without Pants? Well…we miss you. Why you gotta waste our flavor? Damn! Aaaanyway, it’s our annual music special, so feast your ears, and we’ll be back with live episodes soon!
It’s all downhill from here.
In 1996, UEP Systems released Cool Boarders on the PlayStation. It was one of the few pioneers of snowboarding games on home consoles. The popularity of extreme sports was steadily gaining momentum in the United States, as were releases of snowboarding titles from other game developers. So it was only natural that UEP Systems would follow up in 1997 with their sequel, Cool Boarders 2.
Damn you, John Popper!
The last Nerds Without Pants of the year is our annual State of the Generation episode, and we have a lot to say about the new consoles, where they may be going, and also highlight a ton of the biggest stories in gaming from 2021. Check the timestamps to skip ahead if we are covering a story you don’t care about. We’ll see you in 2022!
Mergeajuana.
Well hello there! This is the final standard format episode of Nerds Without Pants of 2021, so we decided to bring Mike Fallek on and recorded an episode so long that you won’t finish it until 2022. Yep, totally meant to do that. Wasn’t an off-the-rails affair from minute one. Nope.
The Street Fighter
Sometime in May 1986, Japanese arcades saw the release of a brawler called Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun (roughly meaning Hot-Blooded Tough Guy Kunio in English). It stars Kunio- a miscreant high schooler fighting for a classmate being picked on by rival gangs. The game is notable for being the first brawler to feature an urban setting and introduced many trademarks common to the genre- a tough guy protagonist, themes of street justice, generic thugs, female villains, and so on. The game underwent significant revisions for its Western release and subsequent NES port, including a name change to Renegade and the story wholly disconnected from its source material.
I hurt.
This episode is late and I’m in so much pain writing this that I can’t think straight. You know the drill: we talked about stuff. For a long time. About video games.
Cute but Deadly
After seeing the incredible success of Konami's shoot-'em-up Gradius, Sega sought to create an arcade game that could rival it. So in 1986, game designer Yoji Ishii (Flicky, Outrun, NiGHTS) came up with a concept that combined the whimsical sensibilities of Twinbee with a giddy samba-esque soundtrack to create Fantasy Zone. As a lighthearted take on side-scrolling shooters that later cemented the "cute-’em-up" subgenre.
That's a good button.
Welcome to another banger of an episode of Nerds Without Pants! We hope this episode pushes all of your buttons, because that’s the topic of the day: BUTTONS! It will make sense when you listen to it, we promise. We also cover a handful of recent releases, and Serious Sam steps into the cage with Turok Evolution!
A whole new world.
Witnessing the leap from the NES to the new 16-bit Super Nintendo in 1991 was downright magical. The console had an eye-catching futuristic design (in the eyes of my six-year-old self anyway), and the hardware produced higher-quality graphics and sound that delivered an experience impossible for the previous generation. And what better title to lead the charge than Super Mario World? I remember seeing the game for the first time at a graduation party for a friend going to middle school. We all huddled around her TV, taking turns playing the game. As soon as that giant Banzai Bill streaked across the screen, I was hooked.
