PPR 159

verything’s an Ad nowadays (#notanAd) and the constant outpour of late-stage capitalism getting pumped out through our screens and on our pages has objectively reached a point of Ad nauseam (sorry, we just couldn’t resist.)

In all seriousness, though, if there’s one form of entertainment that’s fueled by marketing magic more than any other medium, it’s video games, and there are generations upon generations of material to take a look back at and examine the expansive world of Video Game advertisements via printed ads and broadcast commercials. Join George, Sean, Andrew, and special guest Peter Skerrit as they examine nearly 50 years of promotional material and discuss some of the memorable, or more accurately, psychologically impactful ads that have embedded themselves deep into the minds of these middle-aged game junkies.

From the edgy attack Ads of the 90’s to the arthouse schlock of the late aughts, we’ve got all of the deep cuts for you, as we can’t help but feel nostalgic for the shameless sales pitches of old and the levels of showmanship that Video Game advertisements used to have back then before giving up and paying Geoff Keighley a bunch of money to hock their stuff for them.

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 Presents Limelight: Virtual Boy Wario Land

his year makes the Pearl year for the Virtual Boy folks—yeah, that’s right—thirty friggin’ years of the Nintendo misunderstood 3D-enhanced 32-Bit platform. Now, we here at Press Pause Radio are no strangers to romanticizing the goggled little tripod-ass tripoding shitpost of a video game system, but this year just so happens to coincides with the same year we achieved our bog boost in video and audio production. Which means we now have hands on a consolized Virtual Boy that’s been RGB-modded with Furrtek’s Virtual Tap mod and Retro Onyx’s wireless Virtual Boy controller!

So what game are we going to ring in the special occasion with? The obvious one of course! George and Sean are going to get down with Virtual Boy Wario Land, and chop up all of their memories of the platform and its current status in the current pantheon of gaming culture (or they might just sigh a lot, the Virtual Boy just kind of brings it out of them.)

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch at 7:00 PM PST on 08/21/2025 to watch our gameplay of old Nintendo hardware and the weird-ass obscurities stuck on it! 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: Pokémon Brown 20th Anniversary Edition

ow that a lot of the studio issues have been ironed out, Press Pause Radio will be able to do regular broadcasts for streaming and video again, and we’re starting off the block real WEIRD-like with an updated revision for one of the most celebrated ROM hacks released in the 21^st century.

GameBoy-enthusiast studio, RainbowDev, first cut their teeth on the hardware with an expansive take on the first generation of the Nintendo classic, Pokémon. Twenty years and several other projects later, the studio has returned to where it all began, implementing multiple quality-of-life improvements into the Generation 1 foundation of the series; complete with new Pokémon  from current generations that have never seen the GameBoy screen, new types like Fairy along with additional fan made types like Sound, Gas, Wood, and more.

Join George as he treks through the mysterious region of  Rijon through the power of the Super GameBoy 2 on 05/02/2025 at 7:00 PM PST!

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 Super Play: A Plumber for All Seasons-Part 1: Spring

here are a ton of Super Mario World hacks out there, sure, but none of them are anything like A Plumber for All Seasons. Hacker Alias White Yoshi Egg delivers a spin on the SNES classic that’s so radical that it plays like a long-lost entry to what could have been a bonafide Super Mario World Trilogy!

Join George and Andrew as they go through the entirety of the adventure, season by season, and show off all the neat shit that’s been packed into this, dare we say, Wonder-esque experience on the Super Nintendo!

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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Reading between the lines: A look at Instructional Booklets

he written word: society lives by it, people relax with it and students learn to grow from it. As the saying goes, the pen truly is mightier than the sword.

Many of us will never forget some of the first words that taught us the beauty (and flaws) of all that language has to offer. For me, it all started with three fondly remembered words that spark joy for many classic JRPG fans:

"You Spoony Bard!" 

This blatant mistranslation made for a hilarious conversation starter that's still worthy of many Final Fantasy IV references to this day.

Books, novels, and magazines serve as a gateway to learning how to read and write over the years. And hell, we had some great reads in the classroom over the years compared to several other generations. I have fond memories of getting into titles such as Bunnicula, the Goosebumps series, and, eventually, George Orwell's 1984 (even if it's a bit real at times now). Not to mention that it would be criminal to forget anything by Beverly Cleary, who recently passed on at the age of 104.

Still, there's another outlet that I don't credit often enough for leading to my own expanded interests in the academic world: video games.

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