The Cane and Rinse videogame podcast

In a pre-prequel, pre-Disney's Star Wars world, almost any game featuring George Lucas' galaxy-spanning space opera was greeted with fervour. So it was with Star Wars: Rogue Squadron for the N64 and PC in 1998. Leon, Chris Worthington and Jon - along with contributions from you, the listeners - suit up and blast through the entire trilogy, focusing on the original, and GameCube sequels Rogue Leade...

“EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG” Mark Cerny’s first full project as a prodigious teen game creator (after coding a ‘mushroom growing algorithm’ for Millipede) was Atari’s […] The post Marble Madness – Cane and Rinse No.645 appeared first on Cane and Rinse .

Representing the tiny overlap in the Venn diagram of at least two niche subgenres (prehistoric jungle platformers/games with simian protagonists), Juju Densetsu (or Toki) is also a fairly pedestrian, memory-based platform/shooter. Leon, Chris Worthington, Dan and Toki-lover Michiel muse upon why this one has been condemned to apparent obscurity, despite receiving some acclaim, multiple home conver...

Installation artist, juggler, balloon artist and first-time game developer William Chyr told himself it would take three months to design a Portal-sized puzzle game. Seven years later, he released a 'counterfactual physics game' that captures the spirit of both M.C. Escher's mind-bending work and the Paris scene in Christopher Nolan's Inception. Thomas, Brian and Chris Worthington chat about the i...

After a tumultuous few years of company takeovers and platform swaps, Rare's Perfect Dark Zero landed as an Xbox 360 console exclusive launch title. Leon, Darren (former Rare), Ryan (Xbox employee) and community contributors pick the prequel apart, 19 years on from its release. Could it live up to the legacy of its N64 forerunner, let alone that game's predecessor GoldenEye 007? Listen in to find...

Just ahead of the release of the fourth instalment in BioWare's fantasy RPG series(if you're a supporter of our Patreon), we finally get around to scrutinising the third game in the series - Dragon Age: Inquisition. Leon, Brian, Leah and Tony have quested long, scouring the plains of Thedas to explore the game's systems and characters - intimately. As usual we also have correspondents from the far...

What better way to spend time in the ocean than to fish while trying not to succumb to ancient malices from the deep? For this is apparently what is on offer with 2023's indie darling, Dredge. Chris O'Regan with James and Brian along with contributions from the Cane and Rinse listenership – tell tall tales of fishes larger than a house they 'allegedly' caught, while fighting off stress induced fat...

Marvel's relatively obscure comic book sci-fi misfits received a huge boost in recognition with their first MCU movie in 2014. Following a sequel and a Telltale series, Square Enix tasked their Eidos Montreal studio with making an action game starring the underdog antiheroes. Leon, Brian, Karl and Leah team up to celebrate the highs and nitpick at the lows of the resulting romp. Along with contrib...

New protagonists for a new era. Initially, officially, considered to be a gaiden, Konami's second game entitled Vampire Killer was arguably canonised as Castlevania: Bloodlines in the USA. Leon, Leah and Sean talk whips, spears, level design and boss fights. Even the always excellent contributions from the Cane and Rinse community can't persuade us to spend much time on the neutered European/Austr...

It could have been Sonic 3D, but the tech wasn't ready. In fact, the game itself wasn't entirely ready when it was due to release, leading to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles coming out on separate (full-price) cartridges. Leon, Leah and Tony - along with community contributors - dash into the eventual complete title, Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

Vampire Survivors started off as a solo developer effort that turned into a huge indie hit. A compulsive experience that employs various slots-style visual and audio cues to give upgrades more 'juice', the game is nevertheless an incredibly generous affair with rock bottom store prices and no microtransactions. Thomas, James and Sean – along with contributors from the listening community – chat th...

Yie Ar Kung-Fu marked the first appearance of many core one-on-one fighting game tenets that remain in use fully 40 years later. Join Leon, Chris O, Chris W and Jesse (as well as contributions from the listeners) to find out which parts of the rulebook Konami wrote all the way back in 1984. There's also time for talk of opponent strats, as well as the lowdown on the game's many conversions, a sequ...

This week, we put the "cane" back in Cane and Rinse with our discussion of DuckTales on the NES and the ahem dynasty of duck games that followed. We detail the pre-interactive origins of everyone's favorite policy failure, Scrooge McDuck, and track his adventures up to 2013's WayForward remake. Ryan, Leah and Michiel quack the case of this buried treasure with contributions from the community and...

Covering all the main games from thirty years of Iron Fisting, we relive the mad, bad Mishima saga and recall its many combatants. Leon, Michiel, Rich and Sean wax lyrical of 10 hit strings, mighty juggle combos and multipart, limb-breaking holds. As usual, we have some great, nostalgic memories from the Cane and Rinse listenership to share as well.

From oaks to acorns. The Fable series began life as O.G. Xbox exclusive, released under the weight of some big talk of tantalising concepts in 2004. Leon, James, Tony and a returning Darren Gargette - along with contributions from the Cane and Rinse listenership - relive the legend of the first Fable, and replay the game in a post Dragon Age, post Witcher III, post Elden Ring, post Baldur's Gate I...

All-but abandoned after just two critically successful entries, Capcom's Power Stone is a series that lives on only in the hearts of those who played it quarter of a century ago. Leon, Karl, Michiel and Ryan - along with contributors from the listening community - bash out what made Power Stone such a blast, and ponder what the sequel was an eternal party favourite for some, yet an over-egged pudd...

Terror most fowl or anserine champion? James, Brian and Leah are going to find out if House House’s goose is cooked or whether they laid the golden egg with 2019’s Untitled Goose Game. There sure are a lot of goose idioms, huh?

The infamous odd-one out. Nintendo SPD collaborated with Tecmo's Team Ninja for the Wii-exclusive follow-up to the Prime trilogy, with results that weren't greeted entirely enthusiastically by press or punters alike. Leon, Chris Worthington, Leah, Rich and community correspondents get to grips with Metroid: Other M - its quirky cameras and unintuitive interface, and perhaps most controversially, i...

Two shoot 'em ups with two names each, from Capcom's arcade heyday of the late 80s/early 90s. Leon, Chris Worthington, Michiel and expert guest Ed Tremblay equip formidable loadouts and launch into the skies of Area 88 / U.N. Squadron and U.S. Navy / Carrier Air Wing.

That game with the cat. Actually - as we briefly discuss in this podcast - there are loads of games with cats. But we're talking about this one: Stray. Leon, Jay, Tom, Tony and community contributors chime in on BlueTwelve Studio's underground feline hopepunk adventure, and its furmidable protagonist.

A trio of games, but not a trilogy, make up our The Ninja Warriors series podcast. Leon, Chris Worthington, Michiel and guest Bog Hog stomp and slice their way through the arcade original, the Super Famicom/SNES ground-up reimagining and the contemporary remake of that: The Ninja Warriors. The Ninja Warriors Again and The Ninja Warriors Once Again (AKA Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors) all ge...

We return to Hideo Kojima's back catalogue in the 1994 Japan-only title Policenauts. Rich, Chris Worthington and Leah look into the mind of Kojima before he took the world by storm with Metal Gear Solid. Borrowing heavily from 1980s cinema, blending visual novel and point-and-click, as well as science fact and fiction, Policenauts tells a near future crime drama about life, thriving and surviving...

It's the newest game we've ever covered on Cane and Rinse. Probably. But also, it's 20 years old. What gives? Leon, Brian, Leah and Ryan - along with contributions from the listenership - jump right back into Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, hyphen and all. The panel gets into the usual forensic dissection of the 2004 follow-up to the N64 original Paper Mario - and we talk about the 2024 versi...

A double game 'twofer' show, as we look back at the start of the so-called 'Golden Age' of arcade games and two titles depicting similar concepts with wildly different approaches. Leon, Brian, Chris Worthington and Tony touch down with Atari's 1979 Lunar Lander, a vector graphics-based sim of sorts. Then the crew turns its attention to the Japanese developed Space Invaders spin-off, Lunar Rescue f...

It's Elden Ring. In the lead-up to the long-awaited Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, Leon, Brian, Jay and Thomas summon collaborators and take on the daunting quest of podcasting about a game with just so much to it. With a collective play time of 750 hours or so  - thousands if you include our community contributors - we attempt to encapsulate the scale and scope of FromSoft's epic open-world RPG, shar...