The Retrograde: A Video Game Podcast

Happy New Year, everyone! Since we capped off 2022 with some backwards-looking lists, we figured we'd start off 2023 with a conversation about what we're most excited about in the gaming realm! Sure, some of these games may have appeared on PREVIOUS "Most Anticipated" lists from prior years, but that doesn't mean we aren't still very excited for them! But with 2022 having so many heavy hitting seq...

We may have started this podcast as an excuse to revisit retro games, but one game has loomed over our conversations almost every single month: Overwatch. With Overwatch 2 entering our lives a few months ago, we've had plenty of time to let the changes sink in, and reminisce over some of the elements of Overwatch 1 which we find ourselves missing. Given the prominence of Overwatch in our lives, we...

We spent ALL YEAR talking about video games so for one of our final episodes of the year, we wanted to open up the conversation to include ALL of our favourite things we've experienced in the year 2022. This week we take a page out of Oprah's notebook and count down our 10 favourite things, from movies, to TV, to music... and maybe even a book? Before we get started with the lists, we recap some o...

Hakuna Matata, everyone! This week we decided to venture back to Pride Rock to revisit one of our favourite movie based games of all time: The Lion King on the Sega Genesis! It's up there as one of the most brilliant adaptations of an animated movie, but it's also notoriously difficult. Will our memory serve us correct, or is this game not worth keeping inside the circle of life? Before pouncing o...

This week we're breaking down the greatest Video Games based on movies OF ALL TIME! You've all heard the old trope that games based on movies are notoriously trash, but surely that can't mean they're ALL worth avoiding. In fact, we believe some of the best games ever made got their source material from a movie. Sure, there are some stinkers out there like Enter the Matrix, but this week we sit dow...

Sure, God of War: Ragnarok has made Norse Mythology all the rage, but what about the cool, hip side of Christianity? We aim to find out how Christian Theological games stack up with a look at Bible Adventures on the NES! It may have made its way to the Sega Genesis by 2005, but the most interesting story is how the developer Wisdom Tree managed to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of this unlic...

This week we're not playing any games! That includes "on the podcast" and "in our search for the top 10 greatest video game protagonists of all time!" It's a no-holds-barred conversation about some of the most impactful, most influential, funniest, and most personable player avatars we've ever come across in this medium we know and love. But before we dive into our lists, we take some time to talk...

Happy Pokemon week, everyone! With Pokemon Scarlet and Violet hitting the Nintendo Switch this week, we took the opportunity to talk about one of our favourite franchises of all time for over an hour straight! It's Pokemon Pinball on the Gameboy Colour! This was one of Mikey's favourite handheld games as a kid, but we aim to find out if it's just a boring game with a Pokemon skin, or if it actuall...

This week we celebrate our escape from the hell that is RetroGrave by venturing into the bowels of hell in the modern Boomer Shooter darling Proteus! This Bounding Box Software title has been in early access for about 2 years, but finally received an official release and is available now on Xbox Gamepass and Steam! Before finding out whether this modern reimagination of first person classics like...

We saved the best for last in this final week of RetroGrave! Neither of us have ever played a VR horror game, so we figured we'd bring you along with us as we tried out Five Nights at Freddy's first VR game: Help Wanted! While it's technically the 8th major installment in the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, this entry is actually the HIGHEST rated FNaF game to be released so far. We reviewed th...

This week RetroGrave continues as we test out another fan favourite scare simulator in Poppy Playtime! Chapter One released in 2021 and is available for free on Steam, and while MOB Games may have found themselves in the middle of their share of controversy, we aim to find out whether their most infamous game can truly live up to the hype. Join us as we run away from Huggy Wuggy and the rest of th...

This week we continue Retrograve with a game that certainly isn't retro, but is most definitely going to get your skin crawling. It's The Mortuary Assistant! It was developed by the one man team consisting of Brian Clarke and Brian Clarke only over at DarkStone Digital, and let us be the first to tell you: it worked on us. But does the sheer terror that this game instills in us mean that it's nece...

We kick off #Retrograve with one of the more iconic horror videogames of the last decade or so: Slender: The Eight Pages Since we started looking at spooky games, a Slenderman game has been one of the most requested titles, and this one does not disappoint. ...or does it? Just because Slender Man and his legacy creeped us out back then doesn't NECESSARILY mean it'll have the same effect on us 10 y...

30 years ago the world of video games was changed forever when Ed Boon and Jon Tobias' ground shaking fighting game Mortal Kombat first made its way to arcades. This week we celebrate the Mortal Kombat franchise's 30th anniversary with a look back at Mortal Kombat 2 on the Super Nintendo! Those of you expecting our first episode of Retrograve are going to have to wait one more week because this wa...

Hang on to your wallets! This week we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus on the Playstation 2! Join us as we sneak back to one of the most iconic stealth platformers of the era, and a mascot game which never seemed to get the attention it deserved. But just because it worked 20 years ago doesn't mean it's still worth playing today. We aim to find out! Befo...

If you think living through 2020-2022 was an odd experience, wait until you go back to 1997 to play Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee! Believe it or not, this year marks the 25th anniversary of this iconic game and the flagship title from Lorne Lanning's legendary development studio Oddworld Inhabitants. We decided to dust off this classic to find out whether Abe and his friends are still as wildly enjoyabl...

Forty years ago, Joust rode onto the arcade scene and brought fresh controls and an entirely wacky concept straight to the mainstream. This week we celebrate the 40th anniversary of one of the most iconic arcade games of all time by hopping on our giant birds and poking eachother in the head with large sticks. It's Joust! But is this 40 year old icon still worth playing in the modern day? We aim t...

What's the best game about living Unicycles that you've ever played? If that question captured your interest, you may want to join us this week as we look back at Uniracers by DMA Design--the company which would eventually become Rockstar North! Released in Europe as Unirally, this obscure unicycle stunt racer attained "cult classic" status when its release was jeopardized by a lawsuit brought on...

This week we rush into Mario Kart 64 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo! We played Super Mario Kart recently on the podcast, and were slightly disappointed by how it held up in the modern day. Surely the jump to 3D will be enough to solidify Mario Kart 64 as one of the best kart racers of all time, right? Tune in to find out! But before we take to Toad's Tu...

This week we're changing things up with an in depth look at a modern game: Stray on the PS5! It's BlueTwelve Studio's first game, and they came out of the gate with an incredibly unique take on a platformer/adventure game. But is the unique concept enough to bring this game into the realm of the greats? Join us as we run through the entire story, giving our impressions and a final review before an...

Travel back with us to the one-yard line where it all started as we revisit the first Madden game on home consoles with John Madden Football on the Sega Genesis! Originally joked about by being called "Trip's Folly" (named after Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins), it was a game which was deceptive in its intricacies, and the first fully functioning football video game to incorporate 11 players...

Wrap up your hands and start throwing some Psycho Fire! This week we celebrate the beginning of the modern fighting game with 35th Anniversary of Street Fighter! While it did eventually get a few lackluster console ports, the Arcade version is the only one worth remembering. But in comparison to the legacy spawned by Street Fighter 2 on the SNES, is the original entry into the franchise still wort...

This week we reattach ourselves to gaming's most popular detatched-limb protagonist with a look back at Michel Ancel and Ubi Soft's Rayman on the Playstation 1! It's a franchise which is often overlooked in the discussion of the most iconic gaming mascots, but in spite of that it's managed to sell millions of copies, and have an average metacritic score across the majority of its mainline games wh...

Buckle up, D-Pads! We're about to demolish, incinerate, and bulldoze a path of destruction through Blast Corps on the N64! It was Rare's first of MANY successful releases developed from the ground up exclusively for the N64, and it kicked off a partnership between the two companies which seemed unbreakable until a surprise purchase of Rare by Microsoft in 2002. But while this game shattered our ex...

This week we take a swift left turn through a pane of glass and ride back to a time 20 years ago when we were enjoying Stuntman on the Playstation 2! It was a game that sort of came and went, but in the process it left a few cult followers in its dust. Well, this week we dust off the classic Reflections Interactive game and figure out whether it's still worth playing 20 years later! But before we...