First Gen Gamers

Kids today don't know what it was like back in the day to play a game with a friend and have them be in the same room. On this episode of First Gen Gamers, Jed and Ashley are celebrating the magic of hanging with your buds and chillin' on the couch, playing games together. They're looking for that one game in each console generation that best symbolizes the joy of couch co-op gameplay....

Games inspire all sorts of emotions: fear, sadness, determination, longing. That's not what Jed and Ashley are exploring, though. On this episode, we're going through the console generations and talking about the games that inspired rage. The overly difficult, the tedious mechanics, the games that didn't follow up properly on previous chapters ... there's all sorts of reasons to be...

First Gen Gamers is back! We've done a soft reboot. New intro, and new co-host Ashley! On this return episode, Jed and Ash kick it off with a double-header topic; games we love that most people hate, and games we hate that most people love. We're roasting some sacred cows and being the voice for the voiceless. It's a hell of a first episode for Ash and a hell of a return episode for th...

February means Valentine's Day, the season of love. Gaming is full of love stories and romance, whether it's dating sims or Commander Shepard sleeping his way through half the galaxy in Mass Effect. But it's way too easy to list off good couples. How about BAD ones? That's right, Mike and Jed are celebrating Valentine's Day the opposite way, by going through gaming history and...

It's been said there's no such thing as bad publicity. But what about if the publicity is more like notoriety, and it's undeserved? We're talking about controversy. Video games and controversy are no strangers. They've been stuck with each other practically since the beginning. Sometimes, a game's controversy makes sense. But sometimes, the actual content of the game doesn&...

Yeah, we know, the holidays were weeks ago. Listen, we got kids, which means we get sick. But we're here now, looking at the best games that remind us of or celebrate the holiday season! Leaves falling, snow on the ground, family dinners, and all that, but in game form. Yes, you really can find this in video games, and Jed and Mike are going generation by generation, picking the games that giv...

Finally! After a bit of an unscheduled hiatus (having kids means colds and lots of them), we finally get to the final episode of our trilogy! Mike and Jed go through the remaining generations, starting with the final console of the 6th generation, the mighty PlayStation 2, and then cap off the 7th and 8th generations, and Mike even sneaks in a couple handheld consoles in there. It's a super-si...

Thanksgiving may be behind us, but the entire holiday season is about being thankful, so Mike & Jed are continuing that feeling. That, and they're long-winded and couldn't squeeze all their thankful gaming memories into one episode. The OG PlayStation, the Dreamcast, the GameCube, Mike even sneaks in some Game Boy Advance, and we preview our memories for the PlayStation 2, all in this...

It's Thanksgiving time in the United States, a time when you look back reflect on what you're thankful for. For Mike and Jed and the First Gen Gamers podcast, that means what we're thankful for in our own personal gaming lives. The consoles, the games, the memories around those games, all of it. Our memories got so big, we ended up having to split up this bad boy in three parts! In thi...

Every console generation has games that stand head and shoulders above the rest. Games that define the console, games that create a genre, games that change the industry for better or worse. What are these games? Co-hosts Michael Peterson and Jed Shaffer go through each console generation, from the Atari 2600 to the PlayStation 4, picking out their nominees for The Most Important Games Of Each Gen...

It's spooky season, and we're launching First Gen Gamers by talking about horror games! Jed Shaffer and Michael Peterson go through each console generation, and sometimes every console within the generation, and make their individual picks for the best horror games. NES, Sega Saturn, 3DO, Wii U, from the 2nd generation to the last generation, we cover it all! Want to tell us we're wron...