Games We Grew Up With

Samus is a WHAT? Well, if you're out of the loop, you'll just have to listen in and find out... as the GWGW crew discuss Super Metroid for the Super NES! Exploring the wonders of the MetroidVania genre with one of its earliest and best variants, Hosts Chris and Katie wind their way back and forth (and back and forth, and back and forth...) through the planet Zebes, trying to plow through aliens, m...

WhatwhatWHAAAT? No rose segment? Wasn’t that just a weird one-off thing that Host Katie did for Jak 3? Why no, dear listener, it was NOT! Our "Random Non-Rose" series continues, this time with BOTH of the hosts, playing through Dr. Mario… err, I mean, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, for the Sega Genesis! Not familiar? Well, think of Tetris… make it two-player… get rid of the weird shapes… fill i...

Its-a-us, GWGW! For our 36th episode, there was no better choice than a game with a completely DIFFERENT number in it, Super Mario two-to-the-sixth power! I mean, Super Mario 64! Back to the favorite console of everyone with three hands, the N64, and all its three-dimensional glory! Hosts Chris and Katie run, jump, triple jump, wall jump, side jump, slide jump, and... I don't know, probably some o...

KEFKA PLEEAASSSEEEE!!! We're back... not just back with a new episode, but back to our FINAL FANTASY series! This time, it's the Internet's number-one favorite of the entire series, Final Fantasy VI! (Or III, if you grew up in North America in the mid-90s...) The last iteration of the wrongly-numbered Finals Fantasy, the hosts finally got to have a rose-tinted glasses segment for this one, since t...

"Aliens! Earthquakes! Riots! FIIIRRREEEE!!" At least, if you ask Host Katie, that's the plot summary of SimCity 2000... Producer Kyle might instead go with "Electrical grid, taxes, bond measures, and population growth!". Any way you cut it, SimCity 2000 changed the world of simulation gaming. An unbelievable level of depth, especially for its time, truly set it a cut above anything else of its era...

CUT! CUT! Little android man, born without a soul... Cut Man, along with Guts Man, Fire Man, Bomb Man, Elec Man, Ice Man... even the evil Dr. Wily himself... a long list of enemies for our hero, Mega Man, to defeat, on his way to saving the world. It's back to 1987 this time, for the start of a long-running series with blasters, androids, interchangeable weapons, and much to our hosts' chagrin, ne...

Look!  Up in the sky!  It's a bird!  It's a plane!  No, it's... it's... a giant multi-colored, winged whale with a kaleidoscopic paisley pattern all over it, that's for some reason named the Wind Fish!  Come on, how could you not see that?   For this one, we're headed back all the way to the GameBoy, and checking in on everyone's favorite green-robed (in the COLOR ver...

“Bonk.  Bonk.  Bonk.”  What’s that, you ask?  Is it fate, come knocking?  Is it a raven, rapping, rapping at your chamber door?  Why no, in fact, it’s COMMANDER KEEN!  More specifically, Commander Keen constantly slamming his (helmeted) head into the top of whatever was above him, as Hosts Chris and Katie pogo sticked their way through the levels of this 1991 cla...

SALSAAAA!!!  It’s in everyone’s top-5 favorite dips for tortilla chips, and it’s the very poorly-translated name of one of the lead characters in this episode’s game, FINAL FANTASY V!  We continue our grand tour of the Finals Fantasy, and this is the very last one that will come WITHOUT a rose segment… VI and onward, and Hosts Chris and Katie have actually played them before… what a nove...

What’s this? An episode of Games We Grew Up With… with NO rose-tinted glasses segment? With only HALF of the hosting crew? Yes, my dear friends, your wishes have been granted! It’s Host Katie, accompanied by Host Katie, with a dash of Host Katie for good measure, talking about Jak, Jak, and Jak again… because it’s JAK 3 TIME! With this new format, it’s more of a “quick-hit review” of a game, just...

It’s that time again!  Time to dive back into the archives and pull out another classic title to frustrate one, the other, or both of our hosts! This time it’s fire-blasting, boost-jumping, dragon-saving, key-fetching, and platform-gliding with everyone’s favorite winged protagonist, Spyro the Dragon!  Back to platforming, back to the PS1, and with the added bonus of Host Katie’s favorit...

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  It’s… a giant baby?  Come to crush us?  As we try to save our neighbors from giant worms, roaming zombies, and 6-foot-tall ants climbing over the hedge maze that we really shouldn’t have put into the backyard in the first place?  I know, I know, everyone loves a first-person maze (particularly Host Chris), but maybe we should have thought about...

MEIN LEBEN!  It’s the start of year 2 (Season 2?  Are we doing that?) of the show, and what better way to kick off such a grand occasion than killing a bunch of Nazi scum, and destroying Mecha-Hitler with WOLFENSTEIN 3D, right? It’s time to go back to DOS, it’s time for some Shareware, and it’s time for Host Chris to share some of the great stories he just finished reading in Masters of...

Happy Birthday to us… happy birthday to us… happy birthday, dear podcast… happy birthday to us! It’s episode 26!  It’s episode ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!  It’s a COMBO episode!  It’s a SPECIAL GUEST STAR episode!  It’s an EXTRA LARGE episode!  Everything’s coming up Milhouse today… SONIC!  THE HEDGEHOG!  TWICE!  And also Tails, I guess… if we have to (sorry, Kati...

It’s time!  Final (final, final, final) Fantasy again!  Maybe they should have named the series The Neverending Story.  That’s not taken, right? Final Fantasy IV!  Where, unlike the previous games, you have to… fetch the four elemental crystals?  Deal with a sad backstory involving orphans?  Fly in an airship that Cid gives you?  Hmm, there has to be something ne...

I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that…  err, wait, wrong AI!  This time it’s Guilty Spark, Cortana, along with the Flood, the Covenant, and everything else from 2001’s OTHER evil-space-computer-themed action adventure, Halo: Combat Evolved! This comes after the 24-hour birthday stream for Host Chris, during which the two hosts co-opped their way through the entire campaign in one giant (exhau...

Which way should we go now? I’ll give you a hint… straight to the “Play” button on this episode! Chris and Katie are checking into the haunted mansion of The 7th Guest for PC & Mac, and trying to puzzle (literally) their way back out again! Cake slices, lettered tin cans, first-person mazes, flipping photos, and a whole lot of dumb luck play into this classic that helped to popularize the CD-R...

It’s a (fat) bird!  It’s a (pink) plane!  No, it’s KIRBY!  And he’s a SUPER STAR!  Here for an appearance in the final Super Nintendo game before the switch to Nintendo 64, in an 8-in-1 side-scrolling & platforming adventure, inhaling enemies and exhaling pure, raw, fluffy, pink power! Hosts Chris and Katie hop back in time and dig deep into their memory banks for this one,...

Round 21… PLAY!  We’re headed to Japan!  And Brazil!  And Thailand!  And, apparently, the U.S.S.R.!  Why?  Because it’s Street Fighter II time, and we’re flying all around the world to fun fight locales, dragon punches, yoga fires, and tiger knees! Across the arcade, Sega Genesis, and Super Nintendo, this game showed up across a LOT of systems, and defined the 90s for...

Like blind hogs looking for acorns, we’re back to look for the best Final Fantasy games!  This time, it’s Final Fantasy 3… no, not THAT Final Fantasy 3, the OTHER one!  The one that only came out in Japan originally, and only came out on the DS in North America.  And you know what?  It was pretty fun!  It’s too bad we didn’t get a chance to play it when it first came out....

Let’s a-go!  This time we’re hitting the gas pedals on our 100cc karts and racing our way into 1997 and the game that took the Nintendo 64 by storm, Mario Kart 64!  Hosts Chris and Katie hop in (both with Toad, they’re definitely siblings!) to join the Mario crew racing through Kalimari Desert, Koopa Troopa Beach, Wario Stadium, and of course, Rainbow Road! Drifting, drafting, blue-shell...

It’s time to go back to the past!  Err… back to the future!  Or… oh who cares, it’s BACK TO THE JAK!  Chris and Katie are jumping into the pools of Dark Eco, picking up Precursor Orbs, and figuring out what’s new and exciting with the second iteration of the Jak & Daxter series. Taking a giant roll-jump forward from the first game in the series, Jak 2 adds flying cars, hoverboar...

“Do a barrel roll!”  This episode, our intrepid hosts are hopping into the cockpit again for some classic space combat from 1997 with STAR FOX 64.  In doing so, they answer some of the world’s burning questions like: What’s the difference between a barrel roll and an aileron roll?  What really makes something an aircraft?  And most importantly, what are “space meters”? Chris an...

GIMMEYOURWALLET!  We’re stealin’ cars, throwin’ molotov cocktails, and… turnin’ gangsters into hot dogs?  Well, it’s GRAND THEFT AUTO 2, what do you expect?!? Hosts Chris and Katie are hopping into the driver’s seat and rolling back the odometers of their memories to check out this top-down, crazy, violent, tank-driving classic that helped spawn an era of open-world sandbox games, even o...

A big episode number calls for a big classic game… SUPER MARIO BROS!  In this episode, Hosts Chris and Katie drop down the warp tube allllllll the way back to 1985, and give the OG of classic console games a run-through for the first time since it was near-new! Hundreds of tries on the last level for Katie, a surprise knockoff Mini console for Chris; this episode came with all sorts of surpri...