The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast

More listeners' pre-owned purchases go on trial this week, from classic JRPGs to a hilariously rough PS3-era shooter – and a grim fate awaits anyone who gets on the wrong side of Judge Big Sammy. Apologies in advance if you hate Games Court. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From The Getaway to Sleeping Dogs, this week Judge Matthew Castle puts the open world games that followed in GTA 3's wake on trial. Jeremy Peel returns to help make the cast for Driv3r, among other games. This week's music is from the Driv3r soundtrack by Marc Canham. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From Monkey Island to Full Throttle, we try to boil down the complete library of Lucasarts adventure games into five representative titles – building a hall of fame, the concept of which we stole from a film podcast we like. Former GamesTM editor Ashley Day joins us for this one. Note that our originally scheduled episode, GTA clones on trial, is now coming next week. This week's music is from The...

Matthew talks us through his many hours agonising over a Splatoon 3 review in this week's episode, which features a detailed breakdown of what's new (or not) in Nintendo's latest online shooter. Plus, we break down key examples of new Nintendo series from the past year and explain what they represent in the overall breadth of its output. This week's music is from Bayonetta 2. Hosted on Acast. See...

Saints Row, Arcade Paradise, Symphony of War, Ryse: Son of Rome, Splatoon 3, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Escape Academy are among the games discussed in this month's episode. Plus: we try and clear a mountain of your listener questions with increasing weariness. This week's music is from the Rogue Squadron soundtrack by Chris Hulsbeck. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's draft revenge time! Who can pick the 10 best games released during the years 2000-2005? Vote for the winner @backpagepod on Twitter. We'll update this episode description when a winner has been declared. This week's music is from the Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 soundtrack by Frank Klepacki. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is former Edge editor Nathan Brown, who now runs the newsletter Hit Points (support his Substack at hitpoints.substack.com). Hear what goes into an Edge [10], as well as thoughts on Destiny, E3, Street Fighter and the world of videogame consulting. This week's music is from the Destiny soundtrack by Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori and the Street Fighter II soundtrack by Yok...

Samuel and Matthew ask each other to guess the game based on quotes taken from '90s games magazines – then answer a whole suite of listener questions in part two. This week's music is from Final Fantasy VIII, composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is Valve's handheld PC all it's cracked up to be? Yes! In this episode we celebrate its strengths, highlight its limitations and discuss the games we've been playing on it.  This week's music is all from our theme tune's composer, Barry Topping (@nostoppingepoch). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Slightly later than usual, RockPaperShotgun EIC Katharine Castle rejoins us to discuss the Xenoblade Chronicles series in enormous detail. Hear Matthew's thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 after 140 hours of playing it, and enjoy a great new quiz known as 'Xenoblade ingredient or '90s drug slang?'. This week's music is from the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 soundtrack by Kenji Hiramatsu and the Xenoblade...

Two top 10 lists of the best games of 2013, in our usual style. Don't miss our episodes on the best games of 2006-2012 if you haven't heard them already. This week's music is from the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack by Tangerine Dream and Woody Jackson, and crikey, what a banging piece of music 'No Happy Endings' is. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We undertake another grand project: building a library of the very best games for the Nintendo Switch, starting with 5 (technically 6) of our absolute favourites. Want to know what those are? Listen to the episode, or find the games we discussed in this episode below... Ready? Spoilers! Here we go... Super Mario Odyssey, Metroid Dread, Astral Chain, Into the Breach and Ori and the Blind Forest/Ori...

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Sniper Elite 5 and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge are discussed in this round-up of games we've been playing this month. Our theme tune, which plays in full this week at the very end, is from Barry Topping as ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More listeners go on trial for bad pre-owned games purchases – this time with Judge Big Sammy making the verdicts. As ever, games court delivers zero nutritional value, but we have some laughs along the way. Our theme tune comes from the brilliant Barry Topping, composer of Paradise Killer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

PC Gamer's Phil Savage rejoins us for an episode all about Bungie's Destiny. Hate Destiny? Fair enough! You may still enjoy the first 24 minutes of this podcast for general games chatter. For Destiny players, prepare for two hours of chatter from a genuine expert that goes deep into the series' history – including the top 5 Destiny 2 guns, and the top 5 things to do in the game. Hosted on Acast. S...

Matthew is away this week! Returning guest Jeremy Peel kindly steps in to replace him, as we count down our 10 personal most anticipated games, based on whatever E3 was this year – from Redfall to Final Fantasy 16. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Samuel and Matthew each compete to pick the 10 best PC games released in the years 1990 to 1999 – the poll is closed now but Matthew won this one. This week's music is from the Command & Conquer: Red Alert soundtrack by Frank Klepacki. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Returning guest Andy Kelly joins us to discuss his love of Sega's Dreamcast, and his new Alien: Isolation book, Perfect Organism, which you can back on Unbound: https://unbound.com/books/perfect-organism/ This week's music is from the Shenmue soundtrack by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi and Yuzo Koshiro. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Centennial Case, Tunic, Gears Tactics, Eternal Threads and Little Cities are among the games we discuss in this week's episode, which was painfully recorded across three evenings. This week's music is from The Centennial Case soundtrack by Yuki Hayashi. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is Tim Clark, brand director of PC Gamer with a long history of working on the official PlayStation magazines. Get ready for another top-drawer story about Hideo Kojima, among many other tales from games media history. This week's music is from the Killer7 soundtrack by Masafumi Takada. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's episode, Samuel catalogues the Star Wars games that exist between simple notions like light and dark – these are the 6 and 7/10 Star Wars games that are nonetheless interesting in a bunch of ways. A full best Star Wars games episode is coming later this year, so look forward to that. This week's music is from the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed soundtrack by Mark Griskey. Hosted on A...

Former Edge editor Jen Simpkins joins us to discuss some highlights of her years working in games media, and how she ended up working with the bright minds of the Dreams community at Media Molecule. Find the Playdate drawing Jen mentioned attached to the corresponding episode post on Patreon. Looksley's Line-Up is the DSi game mentioned early in the episode. Find the GameDeveloper.com article Jen...

It's another mailbag episode, with about 20 minutes of what we've been playing at the start as a chaser. It's probably too long, yet again, but it covers everything from our favourite TV genres to trends in games that we miss. Enjoy! One factual error in this episode: Sunset Overdrive was released in 2014 rather than 2015. Our theme tune is by Barry 'Epoch' Topping (@nostoppingepoch on Twitter). H...

On this week's episode, we revisit all three Max Payne games. Section 1 is about Remedy's creation of the third-person shooter series that popularised bullet time, while section 2 covers Rockstar's effort to contemporise the character in Max Payne 3. Hopefully you'll agree we do Max justice. Then, the final section has to be heard to be believed. This week's music is from the Max Payne soundtrack...

IGN's Joe Skrebels joins us for another round of indie game recommendations – and 20 minutes of very welcome Dragon's Dogma chat. 15 more games enter our hall of fame in this episode. Hopefully you'll hear about something you've never played before. This week's music is from the Thumper soundtrack by Brian Gibson. Our theme tune is by Barry 'Epoch' Topping. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...