PPR Presents Limelight: Friday the 13th

Yeah, we know this is a weird choice for the beginning of November, but work with us—shit’s been kinda nuts this year, and we’re still working out some of the scheduling kinks. Anyway, one of the more infamous titles in the NES library, this Limelight will feature Friday the 13^th, the consensus on this game is surprisingly still pretty mixed. Does it rip? Does it blow ass? Georgie wants to say it’s a little bit in between those two verdicts, and just firmly sits at a very tense “it’s Okay.” One thing is for certain though, George has never survived all three nights so he’s going shoot for the bloody moon and try to beat this challenging chunker of a horror movie licensed cart live for y’all to “Oooh” and “Ahhh” at in the chat.

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 11/03/2025 to watch the the struggle to survive Crystal Lake in 8-Bit fidelity! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

PPR Presents Limelight: Silent Hill f - NG+

Spooky month may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some late-ass horror for fallback weekend now can we? This play through is a little different: the game under the limelight for this stream is Silent Hill f, however, Georgie has already done one run through of the game, so this will be a New Game Plus that he’s saved just for Limelight! The mastermind behind the When They Cry series of media, Ryukishi07, has penned this entry of Silent Hill and while the review is still being penned, we’ve heard great things from George, so this should be an interesting watch!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 8:15 PM PST on 11/01/2025 to watch the newest entry of Konami's fog 'n fright franchise! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

QCF: AVGN 8-Bit

One might almost expect a game with the namesake of the Angry Video Game Nerd series to be horrible by design. After all, the Nerd — created and portrayed by James Rolfe — has a penchant for bringing what he calls the worst of the worst to light, sometimes sprinkling in bits of reluctant video game trivia with a sea of curse word-ridden catchphrases. In some instances, it's not entirely unwelcome to see low doses of a weird low-budget robot, cursing mutant, or some other weird shit.

An FMV intro of Rolfe as the Nerd at the beginning of Retroware's AVGN 8-bit may not inspire confidence in the ease or enjoyment of any trials ahead: "This game sucks ... just the way I like it."

Thing is, it doesn't actually suck. Dare I say it's pretty well-rounded, though not the most inventive experience in terms of level flow, gameplay mechanics, or boss battles. This game won't change your life, but you'll have some fun along the way.

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QCF: Hollow Knight: Silksong

It isn’t very often that the cultural zeitgeist of video games just comes together on a subject like the friggin’ Planeteers summoning Captain Planet, right? I mean, thinking back, the last few times something like that happened were the releases of Pokémon GO or Grand Theft Auto V—video game releases that surpassed the typical grand-scale spectacle for their respective audiences and had instead exploded into being these larger-than-life experiences that invaded all of the water coolers out there.

Well, it happened again with the long-awaited sequel to the 2017 sleeper hit from indie studio Team Cherry—Hollow Knight: Silksong.

What was once ranked among the vaporware meme status of Half-Life 3 or, to a lesser extent, Banjo-Threeie (can’t really do Shenmue III or Zach Snyder’s Justice League, because well, those ended up coming out), the highly anticipated follow-up finally emerged from years of silence with a surprise launch date that was showcased in the 2025 Gamescom event. The sporadic appearance of the trailer not only showed everyone watching and in attendance that the game was alive and well, but it also steadily concluded with an eye-opening launch date that was just a mere two weeks away.

No advance press copies or influencer kits—a worldwide release for everyone to experience completely sealed from behind Team Cherry’s doors until its Sept. 4 launch date. The clandestine rollout couldn’t be more thematic for Silksong, as the crux of the game teased a quest that spanned a world far bigger and more daunting than Hollow Knight’s Hallownest ever was, and after spending hours of needling my way through the troubled lands of Pharloom, I can safely say that the hype is real.

Silksong is one of the finest Metroidvanias ever made—a true peak for the sub-genre of “search-action” gaming.

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QCF: Promise Mascot Agency

The Yakuza/Like a Dragon titles are a series of video games that quickly etched their mark onto my heart, especially after I started to lose hope of whether or not the next Shenmue entry would ever happen. In spite of the action-laced criminal drama that the series is famous for, though, the B-Story styled side-quests and activities were what always hooked me for hours on end, more often to the extent that the main objectives of the games were ironically set to the side. While Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio made sure to pack plenty of flashy distractions and gripping stories, there was a certain recurring trend among the low-stakes pastimes that were included in each Yakuza title—a business-simulator-like mini-game. These side-operations didn’t just have some flimsy premise to justify their inclusion, either; these games are often sizable productions, complete with their own wacky gravitas of the “Saving the Orphanage” variety attached to the ordeal, and in some instances were just as deep as the main plot.

Thinking back, I remember spending a whole night grinding away at Ichiban Confections, and just easily lost count over how many times that I had thought to myself, “Man, this should be a whole-ass game with a full-time 40-hour campaign and everything…”

Well, it would seem that Kaizen Game Works must have heard my silly pipe dreams and did just that with Promise Mascot Agency, and even enlisted the incredible talents of Takaya Kuroda for good measure.

Beyond the parallels to the Dragon of Dojima’s outings, Promise Mascot Agency offers an engrossing story of perseverance and redemption through a massive melting pot of gameplay mechanics that have no business working together as well as they do. The end result is a fresh and weirdly addictive venture that delivers an experience that’s even better than the bizarrely solid sum of its parts.

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PPR 160

Are beards still neat? We wonder, mainly because we’re older and less hip—plus we noticed the significant lack of facial hair upon the plastic grimace of Labubus, so shit’s been tripping us up to say the least.

Or maybe it’s all of these heavy-hitter video game releases that are stacking up in October that have got us slipping up because HOO-boy are there some blockbuster titles appearing on shelves this month, and we’re desperately trying to keep up with it all. Join Ed, George, and Andrew as they dish on the latest news of the concerning buyout of EA, Microsoft’s ludicrous price hikes across the market, and the main topic for the episode, what we’ve all been playing in yet another edition of “What’s in your Console?”

The list spans to Borderlands 4, Hollowknight: Silksong, Sonic Wings Reunion, Silent Hill f, Skate, Tokyo Jungle, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Hades II, Persona 3 Aegis, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 Royale, Lost Soul Aside, and a ton of Magic: The Gathering talk that’s filled with all of the oogling and speccing you could hope for!

Come for the unqualified cosmetology opinions, stay for the gluttony of software we’re stuffing ourselves with. Shit, we’re not even ready for Ghost of Yōtei, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Ninja Gaiden 4, or… 

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 our Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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PPR Presents Ourcade: Nintendo Randomized Tandomizer Part 2!

Sup everyone?—remember that new video feature we’ve been teasing for the last couple of years? We’re FINALLY doing it; the feature is Ourcade, and it’ll be a special feature where my partner, Val, and I, will stream some games in tandem with one another—specifically games that have had a remaster or remake, where I will be playing the original, and Val will be playing the new version (unless we decide to switch up the roles for certain exceptions.)

Returning to where they last left off, George and Val will be playing some randomized hacks of Nintendo classics! George will be playing a special randomized hack that combines SNES favorites, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid, into one combined experience where not only will various rooms or doorways transition you between Hyrule and Zebes, but integral items from both games will be randomly shuffled from their typical areas in the game. In an even bigger twist, the items can be randomized into the other mashed game, i.e., the hookshot could be held by a Chozo while the Super Missile will be stashed in a treasure chest in some dungeon—shit’s going to be wild. Val, on the other hand, will be playing Pokémon Soul Silver, which will randomize all aspects of Pokémon encounters, from the choice of starters, to the wild encounters, and the teams that various trainers and leaders will have when you run into a challenge—oh, and items will also be randomized too!

May we get the charitble blessing of RNG-esus tongiht and make some HUGE progress for y'all! 

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 09/11/2025 to watch our gameplay of iconic Nintendo titles filtered through randomized chaos! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch Channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

PPR Presents Limelight: Hollow Knight: Silksong

The indie equivalent of Shenmue III and Half-Life 3 is out! The meme is officially dead! Everyone’s favorite chat spam has materialized, and the sequel to the 2017 Metroidvania Sleeper is here!

Hollow Knight: Silksong is FINALLY a thing, and everyone’s kinda freaking out about it. Join George as he dives headfirst into the gloomy, labyrinthine journey that’s sure to be filled with all of the cheap enemy placement and tricky wall-jumps you could ever imagine and then some! The jury is still out on whether or not the wait was worth it, but one thing is for sure—the amount of hype and joy for this release is feverish, and we, for one, cannot wait to see what all of the hullabaloo is all about!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 9:30 PM PST on 09/06/2025 to watch the highly anticipated sequel from Team Cherry! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch channel, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!