QCF: Mina the Hollower

The halcyon days of a development house being propped up entirely through the popularity and success of its flagship mascot are long gone, yet Yacht Club Games has managed to do it for a little over twelve years thanks to the charismatic and strong back of the spaded squire, Shovel Knight. After seven games and nearly fifty cameos later, however, Yacht Club has arguably toured the azure star around the block more than Nintendo has with its iconic plumber in that amount of time, and has now set its sights on delivering another larger-than-life world to pour its creative juices into—producing a new hero to support the Yacht Club Games’ masthead.

Following an eight-year development run funded by a million-dollar Kickstarter Campaign, Mina the Hollower is Yacht Club Games’ sophomore release, and another retro-inspired experience that’s engineered around the juxtaposition of multiple gameplay conventions. Like Shovel Knight before it, the Zelda-like, Game Boy Color-minded formula is a zesty melting pot of familiar yet fresh tastes that successfully results in Mina the Hollower delivering a signature flavor in its own right. More importantly, it already feels like the kind of follow-up that proves Yacht Club still knows how to build a standout world around a new hero.

Just because Mina the Hollower is an inventive blend of familiar concepts doesn’t mean it’s good, though, right? I mean, that line of thinking has also led to a slew of disasters like Spaghetti Tacos and whatever the hell that Magnum PI/Murder, She Wrote crossover was. Fortunately, not only does Mina the Hollower deliver a fusion that’s on par with Avacado Toast, it may just be the best damn game to have released in 2026 so far.

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QCF: Mouse P.I. for Hire

Relax, everyone, I solved the case! Troy Baker is the voice actor playing the role of the hardened, fondue-sipping war hero-turned-private-investigator protagonist of this game. I knew I had heard that voice somewhere, so it was a big surprise when I checked my search engine, er, I mean the board of clues, and came to that deduction. Spending hours of time in the world of Mouseburg in Mouse P.I. for Hire as an anthropomorphic mouse detective will make any player feel like they’ve jumped into a noir crime drama.  In the influence of games like Cuphead and the playstyle of Bioshock with big animated set pieces and exploration of a world out of a time capsule, this title has something for every player.

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PPR Presents Limelight: Mina the Hollower Weekend

While we strive to never play favorites at Press Pause Radio, we would be outright liars if we didn’t cop to the fact that Yacht Club games is one of our favorite independent game studios out there, so yeah—you could say we’re a little excited about Mina the Hollower going gold, and now that it’s here, it’s an experience that’s so much more than we could have ever hoped for.

Our review of Mina the Hollower will hopefully be out in the next week or so as we prep our pieces, videos, and podcast to start the month of June off, and we couldn’t think of a better stone to kill two GameBoy Color-inspired bats with than to stream the new release from Yacht Club for y’all this weekend!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch or YouTube  at 7:45 PM PST on 05/29/2026, and again at 6:30 PM PST on 05/30/2026, to watch what may already be the biggest contender for the Golden Zonkies’ 2026 Game of Year award! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch and YouTube channels, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

QCF: Yooka-Replaylee

In an age where we can still get sequels or remakes for IPs that have been dormant for decades, like Pocky & Rocky, Joe & Mac, Snow Bros., or the anomaly that keeps coming back, Bubsy, there’s a certain Bear and Bird duo that hasn’t been active since their weird build-a-car stint that was exclusive to the Xbox 360. The furry pair have left a near-indomitable mark on the 3D Platformer genre, so much so that a big chunk of the development team that worked on the property went on to pitch a spiritual successor through the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, and were able to successfully release an entirely new property, Yooka-Laylee.

Despite getting enough traction to release an arguably more beloved side-scrolling sequel that paid homage to another classic from their old stomping grounds, Donkey Kong Country, the response to the original Yooka-Laylee was a bit more polarized than anticipated. I, for one, enjoyed it for what it was, but also felt like it didn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, especially when the core idea seemed to revolve around the idea that “bigger means better.” As time went on, though, every attempt to revisit the game after my first run of it gradually soured me more and more with each return to it—the juice it promised just didn’t have the shelf-life I thought it would.

Yooka-Replaylee, swings back hard on this oversight by unfolding the dense origami-like world design of the original into a more fleshed-out version that unlocks all of the expansive nooks and crannies into a more seamless, open-world experience, and that’s just one of many upgrades and improvements to be found in this revamped take of the 3D platformer throwback.

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PPR Presents Play Play: Gladmort Press Kit Demo

2025 sure has been a banger year for the Neo•Geo, like—we’ve got Final Vendetta, Vengeance Hunters, and the game in our latest entry of Play Play: Gladmort, by Chipsonsteroids and Pixel Heart.

George had the opportunity to check out a slice of this action title for SNK’s black-and-gold wonder, courtesy of a demo provided by the developer, where he played it with original hardware via the NeoSD Flashcart from Teraonion. Check out what he has to say about it, and all of the ways you can scope out this game now, regardless of whether or not you have what may be the most expensive retro console to own.

Late to the Party: Void Stranger

Memories of my youth in school certainly aren’t the most pleasant times from my childhood, because, surprising no one at all, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call an academic kid—some would say I was more of the opposite. Still, aside from all of the coming-of-age crap that public school pounds into you, there was a memory I had from an art assignment our English teacher gave us to complete (weird, I know, but stick with me.)  The guy was SUPER into Ernest Hemingway, like, he just loved the way that old drunk could mentally instill a scene with his stories using just carefully woven words and nothing more. So, naturally,  he wanted us to try and draw out a specific scene from one of his books, A Farewell To Arms, where we had to do an interpretative sketch drawing of the moment the main character, Frederic, was caught in the mayhem of the Italian army’s retreat during World War I.

The classroom sheet detailed the instruction in a blurb at the top, right below the usual heading where you would write out your name and the date, with the rest of the sheet being a blank canvas for you to use for the sketch. I don’t know what came over me, but I used ALL of the real estate the paper had to offer, which included me scribbling art over the instructions and header area, using every inch of the paper I could.  I mean, I too enjoyed the work of Hemingway, so I’m sure that helped my engagement with the work, but my teacher absolutely gushed over the paper after I turned it in (I promise you this humble brag is going to go somewhere, stick with me.) My English teacher praised that my vision wasn’t limited by the concept of margins, and that I went beyond these perceptions to complete my goal with the classwork.

I haven’t really thought about this dumb little moment for years, until just recently, when I decided to pick up where I left off on a little gem of an indie game that took over my life for a few weeks in 2023, System Erasure’s Void Stranger. As much as I had enjoyed the game, I eventually succumbed to the density of its challenge, and the availability of several other new games at the time, I decided that it was time to move on to something else to boot up on my screen.

So yeah, I started playing Void Stranger again, since I thought it was a natural fit for some bedtime gaming with my new ROG Xbox Ally X, and at some point, something just clicked, and it really has sunk its teeth into me this time around. I know I’m a sucker for the usual Avant-Garde gameplay designs that actively work to subvert the very conventions they’re built with, with stuff like Tunic and FEZ, but Void Stranger is just, in a whole different class of its own.  After, ahem, falling deeper into the void with my play through, I managed to tough out the game and make it to the credits.

Something that I’ve felt immensely proud of, and yet sickeningly anxious about, because I’d soon learn that I’ve only scratched the surface of this dumb little brain worm of a game.

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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: Elsie

It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention, and in the case of the dispiriting limbo that Capcom has planted the Blue Bomber in, the iconic robot’s absence has encouraged multiple studios and visionaries to step up and deliver an experience not all too dissimilar to that of the Mega Man effect. With the rare exception of 2018’s Mega Man 11, the super fighting robot has been mainly relegated to nostalgia collections or vanity cameos, and the weight of his “pew-pew” gameplay has been carried on by a variety of indie developments or community efforts.

This new influx of games, however, has also encouraged studios to do more than a superficial spin on the trademark Run’nGun formula, with select titles really showing off the timeless potential of Mega Man-inspired side-scrolling action. One of which is Elsie, an independently developed adventure starring a larger-than-life, mascot-pilled android made by Knight Shift Games and published by Playtonic's new publishing branch, “Playtonic Friends.” As the fourth game to be supported by Playtonic’s offshoot publication label, Elsie offers many familiar dynamics that more resemble the feel of the Mega Man X series than its 8-bit counterpart, only with a Rougelike twist on the setup. While this territory isn’t exactly uncharted with 20XX and 30XX making waves in the subgenre, Elsie sinks its teeth more into the character-driven spectacle its inspiration is famous for, with a side of frenetic bullet action that blends into something like Mega Man X meets SuperGiant Games’ Hades.

I say this with my whole chest and every heavy breath huffed in—words really can’t serve justice to what Knight Shift Games has done with those mechanics—I genuinely believe that Elsie breathes a whole new sense of life into some admittedly fatigued concepts by delivering an immaculate sense of game feel and presentation that I haven’t experienced in years.

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