Wavelengths with Brendon Bigley

Hello and welcome back to Wavelengths! This week my guest is Stephen Hilger — my co-host on Into the Aether, a great artist and writer, and creator of the YouTube channel Memory Card Manuscript. I brought Stephen on to discuss a question sent in by a listener about the current hyper-polarization of video game discourse, from how to navigate algorithm-led spaces to not letting the media consume def...

Welcome back to the show, folks. I recorded this one early as I'll be traveling to see family for most of the week, so apologies for not including any Animal Crossing news here! The short version: I'm excited about it! What I did talk about was suddenly being inundated with three handhelds at once: The Miyoo Mini Flip, the MCON, and the AYN Thor. All three are hotly anticipated devices I h...

Welcome back to the show! Unfortunately Xbox can't stop dominating the news cycle, so I dug a bit into their next, priecier console and apparently-strategic lack of exclusive games. Afterwards I felt like I needed to dig back into my feeling about Pokemon Legends Z-A having played a lot more since giving some first impressions last week. Xbox's 30 Percent Mandate: https://www.bloomberg.com...

Welcome back to the show! This week I can't NOT talk about Xbox again — sorry!! But also I gush about Ball x Pit and dig into my (very) early impressions of Pokemon Legends Z-A before talking through the huge Pokemon roadmap leak that hit the internet earlier this week. Pokemon Leaks: https://twistedvoxel.com/pokemon-leak-reveals-upcoming-games-through-2030-canceled-titles-beta-builds/ --- Joi...

Nintendo is making movies, theme parks, and aligning their games with other multimedia experiences in a way that screams Corporate Synergy Opportunities™ — the kind that board members go absolutely gaga over. On today's episode of Wavelengths, I tackle that along with some updates about Xbox and my experience playing the Resident Evil Requiem demo at New York Comic Con!

Welcome back to the show! With some time away, I've been doing a lot of thinking about where Sony and Microsoft are at these days... as usual. I think in particular, Xbox as a brand feels like it's on a slow descent into a confused existence and I wanted to unpack that as best as I could. --- Join the Patreon: https://patreon.com/wavelengths --- Feel free to follow me elsewhere! Bluesky: h...

Hello and welcome back to Wavelengths! Switching it up yet again this week as I solo-host an extremely low key episode of the show from the lounge chair in the corner of my home office. This week I'm talking about my experience having wrapped up Silksong, catching up with Borderlands 4's performance issues, having a slight change of heart about Game Keycards on the Switch 2, and answering...

This week I'm talking to Chase Allhart, host of two great video game podcasts in the form of Video Game Podtimism and dotzip ! Obviously Silksong is in the air, and the amount of discourse surrounding this one game is off the charts, so we dig into that in a big way before talking about making video game podcasts and, ultimately, Kingdom Hearts IV. — Support Wavelengths:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/wavel...

This week I'm talking to Matt Horton, host of Can't Let it Go, In Sequence, and Flow State about the rumors of four upcoming video game consoles... three of which are the PlayStation 6 somehow. This was a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! — Support Wavelengths:  ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/wavelengths⁠⁠⁠ — The News and More: Flow State: https://www.youtube.com/@flowstatecrit...

This week I'm talking to Percia Verlin, fashion creator and podcaster... she's also my wife. Percia asked me for some vertical iPhone game recommendations, so I brought her on the show to walk through them and have a chat about her gaming history. — Support Wavelengths:  ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/wavelengths⁠⁠⁠ — The News and More: Percia on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@percish Nintendo Refusing...

This week I'm switching things up a little bit, starting with some news about Hollow Knight Silksong and Gamescom before launching into a chat with AJ Fillari! We chat about podcasting, their show DotZip, our podcast network, and building up the critical muscle. It's a good one! — Support Wavelengths: ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/wavelengths⁠⁠⁠ — The News and More: AJ on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profil...

This week I had a chat with Tori Dominguez Peek — cohost of the wonderful video game podcast Press Start — about being a theater kid, what makes a good video game adaptation, and how we're feeling abotu the Switch 2 a few months in. — Support Wavelengths: ⁠⁠patreon.com/wavelengths⁠⁠ — The News and More: Zach Cregger on his Resident Evil reboot: ⁠https://variety.com/2025/film/news/weapons-director-...

This week on Wavelengths I'm talking to Emily Price, a great writer over at Unwinnable and also a PhD candidate in medieval literature! We chat about a whole bevy of things including the word "mid," Dragon Age, and where games are at as a medium in culture. — Support Wavelengths: ⁠patreon.com/wavelengths⁠ — The News and More: Emily on games being mainstream: https://unwinnable.com/20...

Hello and welcome to Wavelengths! It’s a new video game podcast where I’ll spend every week talking to a guest from in or around the games industry to chat about the news we find the most interesting. This week’s episode features a conversation with Chris Plante about his new show Post Games and how he got into games media in the first place before diving into a bigger question about what the vide...

It felt right to put together a Mario Kart World Review while in Japan. Considering the huge weight this one game has on its shoulders as both the sequel to one of the best games ever made AND the only exclusive first-party launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2, there’s a lot to discuss about every tiny facet of its huge changes. One thing I want everyone to remember about Mario Kart World: We’ll...

Nintendo has spent most of its time in the past twenty years differentiating itself from the competition — the GameCube was really the last Nintendo console that went up against other consoles in a meaningful way. Based on the success of the Switch, the Switch 2 feels like a moment where they feel so wildly secure in their position that they’re going to try and eat Sony and Microsoft’s lunch if th...

Usually when a company has literally millions of eyes on it at once, they want people to walk away with a positive impression — that usually means talking about the good and omitting the bad. So while Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct was largely great, it’s the stuff they didn’t talk about that’s starting to come to light and bring a harsh wave of reality to their usual world of whimsy. Here are fifteen...

I've already played a bunch of great 2025 games so far, and it's only February. I think we all knew this was going to be a big year — hello GTA6!! — but I wasn't anticipating being so blown away so early on. Here's a video about some standout games I've played so far that released within the past two months — NOT including Civilization VII which I completely forgot to mention,...

The PSP is having a bit of a renaissance in 2025, and as someone who never owned one growing up I’ve spent the past month or so researching literally every way I could think of when it comes to experiencing that incredible library. Many links:Where I got my PSP 3000: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheGamingArchivePPSSPP: https://www.ppsspp.org/Slystral’s Discord hangout: https://discord.com/invite/retr...

The Nintendo Switch 2 announcement is being received with a lot of middling reactions — even the people who are excited about it seem kind of bored. I'm here to tell you that Mouse Mode is the real deal, dear listeners. --- Feel free to follow me elsewhere! Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bb.wavelengths.online Mastodon: https://idlethumbs.social/@brendon Blog: https://wavelengths.online ---...

The long-awated Miyoo Flip is finally out in the wild, and after years of it being my most-anticipated handheld, I'm walking away from this experience feeling like it needs some more time in the oven. The usual software suspects pop up here and there, but a few key and strange hardware decisions also hold this back from being a device I can confidently recommend. --- Feel free to follow me elsewhe...

I went to Las Vegas for CES 2025 to figure out if this will really end up being "the year of the handheld" and while my answer was less conclusive than I was expecting, I did walk away excited about the puzzle pieces and how they'll eventually fit together. --- Feel free to follow me elsewhere! Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bb.wavelengths.online Mastodon: https://idlethumbs.social/@brendon Blo...

It's January of 2025 which means it's a perfect time to look back at the best games of 2024*. * In my opinion, obviously! Games are art, and while ranking art is inherently silly it's great to reflect on how it impacted you individually. Objectivity is a myth! These lists are as subjective as it gets, baby. --- Feel free to follow me elsewhere! Threads: https://www.threads.net/@brendonbigley Masto...

The Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is out for iOS and Android, and now that I've played it I'm here to answer what everyone in the boardroom of The Pokémon Company was probably asking themselves: Is it the next Pokémon GO? Does it have a shot at captivating the world in the same way? Does it say anything at all about the future of the franchise? Sure! --- Feel free to follow me elsewhere! Thread...

I've become a big Dragon Quest fan over the past few years, having played huge swaths of a whole bunch of them, and having finished a couple as well. Unfortunately, Dragon Quest X eludes everyone outside of Japan and has since its release on the Wii in 2012. Finally, thanks to the collective efforts of a bunch of very generous people online, you can play Dragon Quest X in English with the help of...