The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast

26 (or so) predictions about 2026, based on nothing whatsoever. Plus: our 2025 predictions revisited, and our 5 picks for this year's fantasy draft. This week's music is from the Trauma Center: Second Opinion soundtrack by Kenichi Tsuchiya and Shingo Yasumoto.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two top 10 lists of the best games from 2025. This week's music is from the Promise Mascot Agency soundtrack by Peter McCaughan and Ryo Koike. Want to play Matthew's number 3? Head here .  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Need a video game awards show with dumb categories no company would ever sponsor? We've got your back, once again. Thanks to all our returning guests from this year for dropping in! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is all about the games that hit players with emotional gut punches. You get 50 minutes of nice preamble with returning guest, indie developer Lucy Blundell, then 1 hour+ of our combined 15 top emotional moments in games. After the 50-minute mark, this episode features spoilers (some light, some heavy) for these games: Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Like A Dragon: I...

Cassette Beasts developer and all-round great video game thinker Jay Baylis joins us once again! In time for the release of Metroid Prime 4, Matthew and Jay each share their top 5 games in Nintendo's series. This is the Critical Hit article Jay mentioned on Metroid's possible influences. This week's music is from the Metroid: Zero Mission soundtrack by Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano. Hosted on A...

The podcast eats itself! The Back Page finally dedicates a whole episode to its namesake. How do back page jokes go wrong? And what about the less frequent times when they go well? Returning guest Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer, helps us examine the creation of these gags. There's also a 20-minute bit on ARC Raiders near the start if that's your sort of thing. This week's music is...

The drafts return! Four giant men compete to pick the best games on the Mega Drive (or Genesis, if you're American), SNES and Neo Geo across 8 categories – plus a 9th bonus category specifically for the Amiga. This week's music is from the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro and the Chrono Trigger soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda (not Rick Astley).  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priva...

This week's guest is Matt Leone, former Special Projects Editor at Polygon. Hear all about his new website Design Room, and his work on the oral history of Final Fantasy VII and and Shadow of the Colossus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A deep dive into an all-time classic on Wii. We'll do this again on Monday for Super Mario Galaxy 2, exclusively for Patreon XL Tier members! This week's music is from the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack by Koji Kondo and Mahito Yokota. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Games discussed: Dispatch, Absolum, The Séance of Blake Manor, Ninja Gaiden 4, Hell is Us. Then, Samuel butchering a bunch of Zelda quiz questions. It has to be heard to be believed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A deep dive on the demos we tried during Steam Next Fest, hopefully giving you a few things for your wishlist consideration. Samuel's games: Reanimal, Birdcage, Lumines Arise, The Killing Stone, Evil Egg, Skate Story, Ambrosia Sky, Cairn. Matthew's games: CiniCross, No More Work For Ito, Opus: Prism Peak, The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, The Seance of Blake Manor. We won't li...

Following our moderately good episode about games set in Britain earlier this year, we assemble a list of the 10 key games set in Japan. Did we get it wrong? Probably. Plus: a mini 'What We've Been Playing' episode about two recent download games we've been digging! This week's music is from the Persona 4 soundtrack by Shoji Meguro.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...

Matthew has Covid! Poor chap. At least he got through all six seasons of Justified while recovering. Here are the games discussed this week: Silent Hill f, Ghost of Yotei, Baby Steps, No, I am not a human, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the latest Golden Idol DLC. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Music podcaster and former games journalist Jon Denton is our guest this week! Hear about Jon's journey from gamesTM to being pals with The Weeknd. This week's music is from the Super Mario World soundtrack by Koji Kondo.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A massive year for games, a bleak year for at least one giant man. One of our oldest and most popular podcast formats is back, more than two years after our 2016 episode! This week's music is from the Yakuza 0 soundtrack by Kensuke Inage and Yoshihiro Arai. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's another mailbag. Topics discussed: Mr Kipling's Angel Slices, why Tomb Raider keeps needing reboots, Nintendo's struggles on the GameCube, Steve Martin and matching sandwiches to video games.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you enjoy this episode, consider supporting us so we can make more Two Giant Men episodes just like it! As voted for by the listeners, we revisit Rockstar Vancouver's 2006 ode to high school life – as well as our own cursed teenage years. This week's music is from the amazing Bully soundtrack by Shawn Lee, which we neglected to talk about in the episode. Thanks to Michael 'BanyaBat' for the edi...

The stack of games we've been chewing through lately, plus our reactions to the 007 First Light footage released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our quarterly four-person draft is here! The Two Giant Men are joined by two further giant men as we compete to pick the best 11 games from some of our favourite Japanese game developers. To mix things up, expect a couple of twists on the usual draft format... This week's music is from the Street Fighter 2 soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura and Isao Abe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...

The Back Page's road to GTA 6 – a borderline-unviable series of playthroughs of older GTA games – continues! You don't need to have revisited San Andreas to enjoy this episode. We give you a nice overview of everything going on in the story and missions. We dig deep into the game's early '90s Californian setting, the ways it pushed the GTA mission formula forwards, and why its Definitive Edition s...

With 750 Metacritic 'points' each, who can pick the best 10 games based on their critical averages? A panel of judges will decide, and we'll talk about who won in a future episode! Let us know what you think of this episode format in the comments. It resulted in at least one incredibly wild choice... This week's music is from the Binary Domain soundtrack by Hidenori Shoji and Mitsuharu Fukuyama. H...

More pre-owned game purchases go on trial in Judge Castle's Games Court. It's a fun one! We welcome more entries for future Games Court episodes, if you have them, at backpagegames@gmail.com . This week's music is the Games Court theme by listener Adam Saucier. Cheers for your fine work! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew is away, lying in a hot tub in Scotland somewhere! So, this week Samuel is paired up with his former gamesTM colleague and draft menace Dave Scarborough. You get 45 minutes of magazine memories, then around 80 minutes on the history of Ghostbusters in games (spoiler alert: many of them are rubbish). Apologies for the slight headphone bleed you'll hear in this episode – our audio engineer,...

The main event of the Switch 2's post-launch period is here. But does it have the juice, the sauce or the gravy? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former gamesTM features editor Matt Handrahan is our guest this week. Having spent a decade working on GamesIndustry.biz, he's now Portfolio Director at Kepler Interactive. The most recent game he worked on? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which you might have heard of. This episode, though, gets into the far more important business of discussing the price of pints in Bournemouth's Sixty Million Post...