PPR Presents Limelight: Friday the 13th

eah, 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!

QCF: AVGN 8-Bit

ne 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: Trophy

o matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still think it’s BUCK wild to see a brand new game for the NES get commercially released over 30 years past the system’s prime. The Homebrew scene for these legacy platforms are further bolstered by the flexibility of the Digital Marketplace hosted by every notable name you can think of, like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Valve, or hell, even Atari.

One of the latest releases for the most popular 8-Bit machine is an homage to Mega Man by developer Gradual Games named Trophy, and it’s not only been made available on Cartridge for its original hardware, it’s also available on Switch eShop and Xbox Marketplace via a proprietary NEW Emulator to boot. The technical chops on display are nothing of impressive, as the game seemingly uses every MMC Mapper to push the most out of the system to run it, but the core design of the game hardly does anything to impress beyond the sheer novelty of it being a new Action Shooter you can grab for the NES.

Tophy is certainly no Mega Man, but it isn’t even a Darkwing Duck, or a Krion Conquest, or hell even a Whomp ‘Em—it’s just a another retro game with some bizarrely outdated design by comparison.

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QCF: Nescape

hen most think of the NES, they'll likely imagine platformers, side-scrollers and turn-based RPGs. Nintendo's premier console did, after all, introduce us to the very roots of these genres as we know them today while also restoring our faith in video games as a whole after the 1980s game crash.

Some titles, however, were more experimental than others – more specifically, those of the point-and-click genre. Two that immediately come to mine are the console ports of King's Quest V and Shadowgate, in addition to Manic Mansion from Lucasfilm Games.

One could consider NEScape! a faithful ode to any of these titles now available in the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Live libraries, albeit with a much more docile feel. In short, it truly is an "escape room" for the NES.

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PPR Presents Limelight: DuckTales 2 Player

here’s a lot of doom and gloom today, with a side helping of tempered excitement for Next-Gen hardware that’s just on the horizon—we of course are going to go for something a little more different.

Disney’s DuckTales just debuted the 1 Hour special of “Let’s Get Dangerous” in their Season 3 lineup of episodes, and what makes it so special is that it was a backdoor pilot for the upcoming Darkwing Duck reboot that will air concurrently with the DuckTales reboot. This is the kind of wholesome shit that I needed in the month of October, and now more than ever, I really wanted to celebrate the news with one of my favorite NES ROM hacks available: DuckTales 2 Player.

This special hack released by hacker alias “Ti” not only improves the performance of DuckTales 2 for the NES, but it also gives you the ability to have a second player on-screen with you, and that second player is none other than the Terror that flaps in the night! Join us on Saturday, November 7th, at 9:00 PM Pacific at twitch.tv/presspauseradio as my girlfriend, Val, and I trying to stop Flintheart Glomgold with Duckburg’s and St. Canard’s Finest on the job!

Mudprints Unboxes FHR: Hyperkin RetroN HD

e bought a RetroN HD, unboxed it... and reviewed it?! Get Ready for the first-ever Mudprints Unboxes Full Hardware Review (FHR)! How does the Hyperkin RetroN HD hold up? Let's take a look!

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Bullet Heaven, Episode 179 - Hector '87/Starship Hector (FC/NES)

ullet heaven SAGAs returns! Following up from Hudson Soft's 1986 Star Soldier, In Volume 3 of the Star Soldier Saga, we're taking a look at the first series offshoot from the series proper: Hector '87! It's a ridiculously hard game that pretty much requires a turbo controller... but how does it stack up?

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Bullet Heaven, Episode #161 - Star Soldier Saga Vol.1: Star Force

Tecmo may not have especially many shooting games uner its belt - they're much more famous for their fighting games and early sports titles - but one very early arcade title shook up what people knew about space shooters and singlehandedly created a whole subgenre: The Caravan Shooter. Released to the Famicom in 1985, Star Force paved the way for the venerable Star Soldier Series... but how does it stack up?  

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