QCF: Dragonborne

t isn’t too often that you see a brand new Gameboy game released, let alone in the same year that we see next-generation hardware launch but that just goes to show just how powerful the how well Nintendo’s trademark handheld still holds up.

Despite the strength of the Game Boy’s legacy though, some novel ideas, as unique as they may be, can still find a way to disappoint even the most open-minded of players—that’s Spacebot Interactive’s Dragonborne.

While this new top-down RPG adventure does an admirable job of paying tribute to the Game  Boy classics that came before it, Dragonborne’s individual spin on these familiar tropes ends up being nothing short of tedious at best, and just plain boring at worst.

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QCF: Sega Astro City Mini

here Names like Nintendo, Atari, and SEGA respectively boast a large zenith of the home console market between themselves the past thirty years, no brand commanded a foothold in the coin-operated world of Arcade gaming quite like SEGA did. Beyond the global hits like Golden Axe, Space Harrier, and Virtua Fighter, the Japanese Gaming giant spanned a wide array of genres and gimmicks that redefined the arcade scene with Astro City line of Arcade cabinets. The horsepower behind their intricate PCB boards made way for unique experiences that deployed a wide array of technical marvels that set them apart from their upright peers like super scaling graphics, over-the-top, and JAMMA quality stereo sound.

As the preservation for Arcade software gets harder with each passing year, SEGA took to celebrating its 60th anniversary with a bang with the release of the Astro City Cab Mini—a scaled-down take of their signature 1993 arcade cabinet that’s packed with 37 games that shaped SEGA’s storied legacy of its quarter-fueled library. While it’s a shame that the retro gaming wizards at M2 weren’t programmers for this nifty little machine, the unit’s nostalgic design and collection of titles more than make up for its above-average emulation.

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QCF: Yakuza: Like A Dragon

espite all of the social and technological advancements we’ve made over the last century, there’s an old saying that still gets thrown in the face of anything progressive to this very day—the tired phrase of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 

There are merits to the sentiment though—it isn’t often that an open-world action-adventure dynamic like that of the Yakuza series is able to work as well as it has for the last fifteen years, as each entry only worked to improve upon the foundation of the 2006 PS2 original. Fortunately, that isn’t the case here, far from it; Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's Yakuza Like A Dragon is a revival, unlike anything we’ve seen from a legacy franchise before it, taking the series to a new generation of players while successfully carrying it to new heights for longtime fans all the same.

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PPR Presents The Golden Zonkies: Class Of 2020

e don’t know about you guys, but I think we’re getting pretty tired of shitting on the every year into the next, and while no year deserves to get shit on more than 2020, I think it’s time we right into the new year with a “cool bois” vibe. Democracy has done its part to purge the orange scourge, and mass distribution of the vaccine is gradually making progress, as little as it may be—things are looking up! 2021 has so much potential for games too, both Bog, indie, and retro-alike, so while we prepare to venture safely into the new year, let’s take a look at the best games from last year with Press Pause Radio’s Golden Zonkies: Class Of 2020.

In case y’all don’t remember the updated flow from last couple of years, we have changed up our format and have done away with categories!  Now, bear in mind, we’re still giving our prestigious mark of excellence, a Golden Zonkey, to the games that are deserving of recognition, only, we’re not doing by a respective genre, or category. Instead, we will be giving them out in a personal list format by each of us in the podcast, and we’ll be spending time discussing why we picked the titles we did within a countdown of five. Normally we would have done a roundtable of games that were worth a quick mention from the year, but we decided to mention them in passing instead, along with some not-so-honorable-mentions (we also chose a few more not mentioned on the show to include in the pos!) We will then award the “Golden Zonkey of The Year” in a unanimous vote that was similar to the previous format, and conclude the show from there.

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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PPR Limelight: Back 4 Blood Alpha

e were excited to check out some alpha gameplay of next years spirtual successor to the Left 4 Dead franchise, Turtle Rock Studio's Back 4 Blood. Check out our attempt to survive waves of undead mutations as we struggle to use a mouse and keyboard properly and outrun all the new types of terrors. Hope you enjoy the video and please remember to check out our Twitch channel for more streams coming soon and our Youtube page for all our video uploads. Thanks for tuning in!

QCF: Sam & Max Save the World Remastered

ith the closing of the original Telltale Games in 2018 leaving many fans of adventure games sad and unsure of the genre’s future, many assumed something like Sam & Max may never be seen again. And although the name of Telltale and many of its properties have new ownership, the members of the Freelance Police will have their escapades retold by the original developers in Sam & Max Save the World Remastered. For new fans and old, this collection of the six-episode first season first released in 2006 is a time capsule to what adventure games were, and what fans still crave today.

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House Show: Surviving the Survivor Series

s anyone looking forward to Survivor Series tonight, or is this the annual pay-per-view event that WWE should send into retirement along with The Phenom? Toast and George will discuss the show's ups and downs through the last three decades as well as the impact of several debuts at the fall showcase. We also get pumped about the upcoming AEW video game, take care of our aging canine and Toast predicts that Sting will show up in the ring tonight for the showdown fans never got. All this and more on the latest episode of House Show!

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PPR Presents Limelight: Atomiswave Dreamcast Ports

o we totally know there’s a lot of hype for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and they’re currently the biggest deals in video games right now, but what if we told y’all that there was another big deal happening in the gaming scene right now—one that involved another household name in consoles…

Hacker alias MegaVolt85 from the Dreamcast-Talk Forum has taken it upon himself to convert all twenty-seven titles released for Sammy’s short-lived Arcade Haardware line, the Atomiswave. After some extensive review of the Coin-ops internal workings, it would seem that the system’s architecture is nearly identical to that of Sega’s 128-bit icon, making it possible to reformat the coding of these titles to natively run on the Dreamcast.

Yes you read that right, these games aren’t being emulated or ported, they are conversions that’re running natively on Dreamcast hardware—shit’s wild ain’t it?

Join us on Saturday, November 21st, at 7:00 PM Pacific at twitch.tv/presspauseradio as my girlfriend, Val, and I hit up the first  ten conversions made available so far. Games like Metal Slug 6, King of Fighters XI, Dolphine Blue, Faster than Speed, King of Fighters Neo Wave, Samurai Showdown VI, Demolish Fist, Maximum Speed, Knights of Valour: The Seven Spirits, and Fist of The NorthStar.