Boulder Punch Podcast

"EVEN WHEN IT HURTS LIKE HELL." After the colossal failure of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (both the movie and game) in 2014, it was a clear sign that movie tie-in games were dead in the water, and as a result, the video game rights to Spider-Man immediately went back to Marvel from Activision. Within that very same year, the character was secretly licensed out to PlayStation and Insomniac Games, who...

AS SEEN IN ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE , DON'T FORGET! After the release of their game tying into The Amazing Spider-Man , Beenox took their longest hiatus since they started working on titles about the wall-crawler. No new game in 2013, along with the rumblings of them working to improve on every aspect for the next film's tie-in, had many people hopeful that all this extra time meant Activision gave...

"NANOBOTS, SON!" After the lukewarm release of Edge of Time , Beenox ironically had very little time of their own to reassess their choices, as Activision and Sony had already immediately thrust them into developing a tie-in game for the new Spider-Man reboot film. With the expectations set of making their first open-world game, and with even less time after shipping its predecessor, how did the t...

TWO GAMES. TWO SPIDER-MEN. TWO DECADES. TOO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT. After the massive success of Shattered Dimensions , Activision twisted Beenox's arm into released a follow-up thirteen months later, one that would require the reuse of everything and the subtraction of a lot of things. Twelve years later, as we sought to continue our coverage of previous Spidey games, PlayStation and Insomniac decide...

THESE DIMENSIONS SURE ARE SHATTERED! After the commercial failure of Web of Shadows and subsequent closure of Shaba Games, Activision needed a new developer to turn into a Spider-Man factory. Enter Beenox, a Quebec developer with experience porting a few Spidey games to PC, with a radically new idea. For the first time since 2002, Spider-Man would be going linear, and this time, he wouldn't be alo...

HE KNOWS SO MUCH ABOUT DINOSAURS, GUYS. When it was initially announced in May 2021, My Adventures with Superman seemed like a show poised to be let down by WB. The company seemed to nix every potential Superman project at every turn, Cartoon Network sent action cartoons out to flounder and die, and overall, it seemed like it was too good to be true. Flash-forward over two years later, and after s...

"SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE FOR THE GREATER GOOD." After the headaches that were Black Adam , Shazam!: Fury of the Gods , and The Flash , it felt like the only DCEU films that would've hit a chord with critics and audiences before its end would be Shazam! 1 and The Suicide Squad . Whether or not this counts as DCEU or DCU doesn't matter though, because the point is, we finally got some good food. So,...

JUST A FUNNY LITTLE ALIEN INVASION PRANK ON NEW YORK! CLASSIC VENOM! In the wake of Spider-Man 3 (the movie AND the game, but in this instance the game) being less-than-stellar, Activision quickly ordered a new game that would ultimately attempt to make up for their previous entry's failings. What resulted was a very ambitious, divisive, and uncharacteristically moody game that has become somethin...

"I'M GOING TO DIE!" * BOOM! * After the releases of the widely-acclaimed Spider-Man 2 and the at-the-time-underrated Ultimate Spider-Man , hopes were high for 2007 and whatever Activision and Treyarch would cook up for the release of the third Raimi film. While one of the fruits born from this was a completely unexpected project from Next Level Games in the form of Spider-Man: Friend or Foe , Trey...

"OUR FATHERS DIED TO CREATE ME. AND NOW... YOU WILL TOO." In between the development and releases of Spider-Man 2 and 3 , Activision demanded another open-world game about the webhead immediately after SM2 , scheduled to release a very short eighteen months later. This resulted in a completely unexpected and unprecedented direction of directly adapting Brian Michael Bendis's highly acclaimed and p...

"WE'RE GOING TO HEAL THE WORLD." Although many panels have had to be pulled due to studios' unwillingness to pay actors and writers (alongside several opting to not show up this year), San Diego Comic-Con has soldiered ahead, mainly focusing on merch, video games, and animation, more than enough for us to sink our teeth into. Come tune in as Brian and Alec discuss recent news from this year's Comi...

WE GOT SO CAUGHT UP IN WHAT WE WERE DOING WE FORGOT ALL ABOUT IT. Much like the film it's based on, Treyarch's sequel to the first Spider-Man movie's game adaptation sought to go bigger and bolder. While elements were cut out as late as a year before release (such as Lizard -- as shown in the E3 2003 trailer), the relative idea was to make the first open-world superhero game. What resulted was an...

"WHAT'S WITH THE GETUP, CHUMP?" Several years ago, back when they first started doing a podcast together, the boys had recorded an episode about Spider-Man: The Movie Game that never saw the light of day. We may not be releasing that, but we have a newly-recorded one to replace it! This game is one that they've played so many times and know like the back of their hands, so before Marvel's Spider-M...

"THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE, AND THEY SPELL DISASTER FOR YOU AT SACRIFICE." In another instance of Brian and Alec being variants of one another and living the same life growing up, both of them have been big-time wrestling fans as kids and have been slowly getting back into it as adults. So, instead of making an episode about Spider-Man games this week, the boys have decided to make one about their mem...

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?" This is it folks. Our revisiting of the DCEU has led to this. The Flash has been touted in its buildup as one of the best CBMs of all time, with many saying the age-old phrase of "Best since The Dark Knight ." Between alll the celebrity endorsements, positive screening reactions, and riding off of the nostalgia hype of Michael Keaton, how could this all crash and burn? Wel...

THIS IS (KIND OF) THE END, BEAUTIFUL FRIEND . After revisiting all of its films before its big finale, Brian and Alec are finally ready to dig deep into the highs and (many) lows of the DCEU. What started out as Zack Snyder's own deconstructive take on DC's characters and mythos -- for better or for worse -- turned into a jumbled mess of studio mandates, clashing creative visions, numerous firings...

HOW DOES IT KEEP GETTING WORSE? We were always gonna have to get here eventually. Amazing Spider-Man as a book has not been what it was since before 2007. Despite there being many massive dips in the title's history, there hasn't been one as insistently long and insistently antagonizing as the past fifteen years. From One More Day , to Slott's ten-year stay, to Spencer's run getting kneecapped, to...

"WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOOD GUYS." After nearly five years and two painful delays, the sequel to the instant-classic Into the Spider-Verse has finally arrived! Already being hailed as one of the all-time greats, breaking records on Letterboxd and IMDb, From the animation somehow topping perfection, to the meta-narrative deconstruction of Spider-Man and how Miles bucks the status quo, this film...

CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER? After twenty grueling months of waiting, spiraling, numerous breakdowns, the five stages of grief, and more, we have finally been freed of our chains and have seen the light. We finally have concrete information on Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 ! PlayStation's first showcase since 2021 brought a good few games to be excited for, as well as many games that certainly were shown th...

"INTO THE FOREVER AND BEAUTIFUL SKY." Before he goes off into the wild blue DC yonder, James Gunn has finally put his farewell stamp on Marvel and the Guardians of the Galaxy with the long-awaited final chapter in the story of our favorite intergalactic a-holes. This film has already been widely praised as Marvel's best in years, delivering on action, heart, emotion, and so on. So, what did the bo...

"THE PAST IS A CHAIN. I MUST SEVER IT COMPLETELY." After merely three and a half years of full-time development, the sequel to 2019's STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order has finally been released worldwide! Continuing from five years after the end of the previous game, Cal finds himself fighting a rigged war, with seemingly no way out. With overhauled gameplay, an expanded open world, new characters, and...

"WAAH, WAAH, WAAH, WHAT A WUSS!" We've gone this long without making a Spider-Man-centered episode, we might as well come back around to it. For those who didn't know us from our old show, not only are we massive Spider-Man fans, but have probably played every modern game of his numerous times, and the Neversoft PS1 titles are no exception. These games arguably started the trend of superhero games...

MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU! We may be a day late, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate! This is our very first Star Wars Day here at Boulder Punch, and we're engaging in festivities the only way we know how: rambling for multiple hours! So, tune in as Brian and Alec discuss as much about Star Wars as they can, from memories, to games, to shows, and even pitches for stories they'd want to see!

WHAT IF FORCE UNLEASHED HAD A GOOD PROTAGONIST WHO DIDN'T BREAK STAR WARS? After EA tried and failed to capture the goodwill of Star Wars fans with Battlefront 1 and 2 , the mega-publisher announced in late 2017 that Respawn -- best known for the underrated Titanfall franchise, now Apex Legends -- would be making a third-person singleplayer Jedi game. While many people resisted the desire to hope,...

YET ANOTHER NEWS SPEEDRUN FROM YOUR BOYS. It's been about two weeks since we last recorded for the main show, and WAY more has happened in the world of entertainment than we expected. From trailers, to streaming service overhauls, to the latest unfortunate storyline developments, the Boulder Punch boys are gonna cover as much as they can. So, tune in as Alec and Brian dissect and discuss recent he...