No, no, no.
Welcome back to Nerds Without Pants! We’re coming in a bit late this, time, because Julian got real dang sick after we recorded. Thankfully you won’t notice that in the episode, and it’s a pretty good one, even if we didn’t have much new to say this week.
Pro tip: never let Justin DJ your wedding.
Well howdy, partner! Nerds Without Pants is back, and Mike Fallek as back. So you know what that means: a massively meandering show that loses control almost immediately. Enjoy! Also, why did I start this by typing “howdy, partner”?
Get in the banana boat!
Welcome back to Nerds Without Pants! This week, we hop onto our Email Banana Boat and read your emails! We also talk a lot about games! It’s…you know…a podcast.
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!
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.
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.
Winning shouldn’t be this hard.
As we age, we sometimes look back on a game we once enjoyed and discover that isn’t nearly as fun as we thought all those years ago. F-1 Race is one of those games for me. Originally released in 1984 on the Famicom, Nintendo reworked a few gameplay elements for its Western release on the Game Boy in 1990. Back then, I was enthralled with the idea of racing around in a Formula One machine while battling it out for first place. Maybe it was the thrill of screaming down the track at 360 km, or perhaps it was just the excitement of playing a new Game Boy game. Whatever the case was, I thought I had gold in the palm of my hands.
Time to get out into the old open country.
Welcome back to a very chill episode of Nerds Without Pants! As we gear up for our annual Halloween Havoc episode, we got together for an all Consumption-Junction edition of the show. Even though we didn’t cover very many games we still had plenty to talk about, but you probably could have guessed that already.
...you know that Mario used to talk like human being, right?
Put on your footie pajamas and pour a bowl of your favorite sugary cereal, because this week the Nerds Without Pants are turning their favorite games into imaginary Saturday morning cartoons! Don’t worry, we’ll explain what that is if you’re a young’un. Angelo joins us for this super fun show, so let’s get to it!
