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Fiiighting Trainers by moonlight... Maaaaking friends by daylight... Never running from a real fight... they are the ones called Pokémon! What do you get when you cross a senile old man who can't remember his own grandson's name, a pair of eleven-year-olds who are cast out into the world to fend for themselves in a never-ending Battle Royale of literal MONSTERS, a pair of people who are out there to destroy you for really no good reason, and the world's most powerful creature (Magikarp)? You get Pokémon Red and Blue, of course! Comin' at ya from the good old Game Boy, we've got Weedle, we've got Rattata, we've even got ourselves an ONYX! Come one, come all, and explore the glory of a world that's just totally ok with kidnapping countless creatures, tossing them into pocket-sized balls, and making them fight for their lives until you decide you're done with them and discard them! So grab your red-and-white ballcap, tell the old man what his grandson's name is, and go off and complete his life's work for him while he hangs out in his lab! IT'S POKEMON TIME!

Who's that jumping off the building up there? Who's that calmly walking amongst a group of courtesans as though he's not quite obviously not one of them? Who's that jumping into a pile of hay and saying "shhh, you can't see me in here!"? It's Easy-O! Etch-Ee-Oh! Eez-yo! No, it's EZIO! The hosts are back... err wait, what's that? It's an all-East-Coast VERY SPECIAL EPISODE? Featuring Host Chris and SPECIAL GUEST HOST PRODUCER HOST LISA? Woaaahhhh! Freshly back from a tour across the pond, wandering along the other ponds (obviously I mean "along the canals of Venice, across the Atlantic Ocean"), living the Assassin's Creed 2 life for a while, and they decided to share it with us all, after playing through AC2 upon their return! Where else can you get lessons on murder, technology, renaissance Italian politics and art, and relative comparisons of street widths in modern Venice, than on GAMES WE GREW UP WITH? So cut off a finger, jump off a building, commit random acts of murder, and listen to a discussion of watching yourself be conceived in the past! It's Assassin-in' time!

Oh Kirby, you're so dreamyyyy... or at least, your golf course is! And what better way for a character who's known for being mostly marshmallow-cloud and gains power through eating enemies to celebrate the great athletic event that is golf, than... to turn into a golf ball with a variety of strange powers trying to get you to whack him into enemies and/or the hole! This one's weird, but this one, at the end of the day, is also... golf. Golf with some power-ups and 16-bit graphics, and a decidedly Kirby tone to it. Yet another of the hosts' OG gaming experiences, and since they played it as kids on a cross-oceanic flight with no manual, likely almost as weird as Super Bonk at the time. Was it great? Was it, as the kids say, "mid"? Was it an Albatross or a Double Bogey? Was it something else punny? You, "dear reader", will have to convert yourself into "dear listener", and find out from our sporting hosts as they dive into this pink-gridded, club-wielding, golf-y adventure!

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY, GWGW! It's our third birthday (how did that happen?!?), so we decided to put out a special Non-Rose episode that throws wayyyy back in our hosts' gaming lives! Where else can you go to turn $700 into $10,000,000 than VEGAS, BABY? Or, more often... where else can you go to turn $700 into a sad $0 and end up on a bus out of town than VEGAS, BABY? Welcome to Vegas Dream, where all your slow-moving text, badly-randomized cards, robbery-filled, chandelier-dropping visions of grandeur and glory can come true! Play Blackjack and lose to the dealer's high 20 & 21 rates, Keno where it'll take an hour to input your numbers that then don't hit, Roulette which... well, it works pretty much like a Roulette game, and Slots, where you can struggle to figure out what does or doesn't pay! It's Vegas in all its 1993 glory! Jokes aside, this is a fascinating game with a lot more depth than it seems at first glance. Random events, risks to take, shows to be invited to, weddings to get stood up at, and millions of dollars to win to make your VEGAS DREAM come true! And beyond that, this is one of the first games EVER that our hosts played growing up! On one side you had Super Mario Bros. (ed. note: Episode 15, check it out!), teaching you the nuances of platforming and patience (learned well by Host Chris), and on the other hand, Vegas Dream, teaching you the potential benefits of YOLOing it and hoping for the best (learned well by Host Katie)! How does this 8-bit gambler hold up? How well does the episode work without a rose section? How many other games did the hosts have to go through before figuring out this is the one they meant to be playing? YOU'LL NEVER KNOW! Unless you listen to the episode, of course... VEGAS, BABY!

Ever wonder what would happen if a group of video game developers were told to just go wild and make the weirdest, most confusing, least story-driven, crazy game possible, preferably including a man-child that grows and shrinks, Alice in Wonderland-style, and occasionally shouts out a ride-able set of stone letters spelling "RAGE!"? Neither did we! But here we are, and we all get to experience the ... experience that is SUPER BONK for the Super Nintendo! Somehow the 4th game in the Bonk series, this one comes to us courtesy of a long airplane flight in the 90s that our intrepid hosts took. One can only imagine how much stranger the Bonk experience is as a child on a long plane flight. Perhaps this explains a bit more about the adults they eventually became... hmm... Run, jump, climb walls by biting them repeatedly, turn into a weird meth-kaiju hybrid, and never forget that ... wait, climb walls by BITING THEM? Ok, I officially give up. This game's insane. Maybe the hosts had more luck understanding it. You'll have to pop in and give it a listen to find out!

Kick, punch, it's all in the mind! Well, I mean... that's ONE example of this genre, but this time instead of Um Jammer Lammy, we're focused in on the behemoths of the rhythm game genre from about 2005 to 2015... Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DJ Hero, and all those rock 'n' roll, guitar 'n' drum, rhythm-music games! These games were the life of the party for a good chunk of years, and as it turns out, might still be fun to play today! Our hosts and ONE producer may be musically inclined, but it turns out these games aren't always about how good your ear is... much to Producer Kyle's relief! From Weezer to Grandmaster Flash, Mighty Mighty Bosstones to Babymetal, these games are a great catalogue of popular rock music of the late 90s to mid-2010s, and if you can find your way into getting the instruments... are they worth pulling back out and jamming out? Only one way to find out... A-five-six-seven-DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE AND LISTEN TO IT!

Three, two, one... it's space-lights out and space-away we go! It's time to rev up those hovercar engines, blast around the semi-epilepsy-triggering track, bounce against strangely rubbery walls, and entertain futuristic billionaires by racing other poor unfortunate souls... and occasionally blow up! That's right, it's F-Zero for the Super Nintendo! This one is a doozy, for many reasons, not least of which is that as it turns out, the computer is a ch... actually, you know what? You have to listen to find out what the computer is. However, you CAN find out that this game was an absolute legend when it comes to pushing the boundaries of graphics, racing mechanics, and driving certain (ahem) podcast hosts crazy when replaying it in 2023. But was it fun? Was it exciting? Was it MODE 7? Did it live up to its glory days and bring back all the joy it used to? Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there? Hit play, let the green flag fly, and listen in!

Rise and shine, dear listeners - rise and... shine. It’s another Random Non-Rose Episode! This time we are delving into Half-Life 2 for the PC! Looking back at a game many have said is one of the greatest games of all time is a challenge, but our intrepid hosts have their crowbars ready. Host Chris leads the squad in a live recording to talk about Gordon Freeman’s second (NEVER THIRD... we see you, Valve... we see you...) adventure fighting the Combine, head crabs, and sometimes OBS. OH MY! A game that does not fall into a single genre leads to rambling, inserted comments, and lots of snark. From the innovative gravity gun to dumb AI “SORRY FREEMAN,” Half-Life 2 has a lot to offer and a lot to talk about. Even if you joined us live on Twitch (@gwgwshow), Host Chris added in a little extra cause there was STILL more he wanted to say! Time, Dr. Freeman? Is it really that time again? Take a listen and find out!

Float like a butterfly, sting like ... an unresponsive SNES Classic controller that disagrees with your assessment that you threw an uppercut instead of a body punch! That's how the phrase goes, right? We're in the ring for this one, the squared circle, not hitting below the belt, getting saved by the bell, rolling with the punches, givin' em the old one-two, not throwing in the towel... you see, because we're BOXING! From Gabby Jay to Bald Bull, Dragon Chan to Piston Hurricane, we're fighting our way through this cavalcade of racially-insensitive, overly-caricatured, or just weirdly-hilarious characters, trying not to break our controllers, and remembering that fighting games aren't always quite so well-made as, for example, Soulcalibur II or Street Fighter II. Side note, I just noticed of the 3 fighting games we've reviewed, all have been the 2nd main episode in their series. Weird! Mike Tyson's nowhere to be found to save us here, but drop in and give it a listen, and see if the game could stand on its own two feet, or if the ref called a standing 8 count and had the corner throw in the towel on it. INSERT ONE MORE BOXING PUN HERE. Enjoy! (Ding, ding)

The more you know... about how we play co-op games, the more surprised you are we haven't hurt each other in real life! This very special episode of Games We Grew Up With is all about those magical moments on the couch, across the country, or both, when you get a group, perfectly in sync, working together on a puzzle, thinking as one... and then one person sets everyone else on fire, triggers a trap, and kills the whole group. If you were wondering, that person is usually Producer Kyle. From Super Mario Bros. on NES to Gunstar Heroes on Sega, all the way up through to Overcooked! 2 and Full Metal Furies (both of which you can watch us play on Tuesdays at 5:45pm PT/8:45pm ET on Coast-to-Coast Co-Op on our Twitch channel, https://twitch.tv/gwgwshow !), we have spent our lives playing these games together, working as a team to beat the boss, solve the puzzle, get the high score, and rescue one kidnapped friend or another. It's a unique form of gaming, especially when you can get 2 people on one coast and 2 people on another, all playing together, and in this episode, we do a deep dive on the different forms of it, how it's different, why it's fun, and why it means so much to all of us. And the producers even get involved (sometimes with similar outcomes to when we game together... ahem) Player 2: PRESS START!

Thank you Link! But our Princess is in another castle! ...wait, that doesn't sound right... wrong Princess and wrong mostly-silent Protagonist trying to save both the world and her! This is another LEGEND OF ZELDA, and this time we're finding A LINK TO THE PAST (for the Super Nintendo)! All the classics of Zelda games show up here... Link, Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce, a shortage of Rupees, a shortage of Heart pieces, long and winding dungeons with over-complicated puzzles, and some type of fowl to carry you around the world, of course! Listen in to our host's thoughts about our pink-haired (!) hero and his journey through the Light and Dark worlds, and this game as a cultural touchstone and defining element of what truly makes Zelda... well, Zelda! Gotta go fast! (Right?)

2022... What a year it was for Games We Grew Up With! We laughed, we cried, we screamed at entirely-inappropriate ratings predictions for SimCity 2000 (or at least, some of us did...) From Mario 64 to Final Fantasy VII, General Chaos to Starcraft, Crash Team Racing to Super Metroid, we covered 12 new (old) games, across GameBoy, Sega Genesis, Windows, Super NES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1. They weren't all winners (lookin' at you, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and General Chaos...), but some were just that perfect blend of quality and nostalgia! Shocking nobody, Host Chris had a full point higher in his ratings (8.4 vs 7.4), though the clear winner for the year score-wise was Final Fantasy VII, with each host giving it a 9.5... but was it their favorite game of the year, looking back? What might you have missed if you didn't stay caught up? Well, there's one good way to find out! Just click that "Play" button and listen to a re-hash of the year's fun! Let's-a-go!