The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast

The Godfather Part II of podcasts is here! In this episode, we fire through every major Nintendo series and compile a longlist of games to populate our top 50 first-party list.

Tune in next week for the third and final part – The Godfather Part III of podcasts, perhaps, where we'll arrange the top 50 on air. Does this mean that Sofia Coppola is Wario? Possibly.

This week's music is from the Last Window: The Secret of Cape West soundtrack by Satoshi Okubo.

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Part one of our three-part effort to create a Nintendo top 50 list is here! This episode explores the process of making list features when you're working on a magazine or website, and the compromises and decisions that lead to the final result.

Then, in the second half of the episode, we revisit the top 100 first-party Nintendo games from the final issue of ONM back in 2014, where Matthew explains the choices made. This sets the stage for what comes next...

Look out for parts two and three across the next couple of weeks. 

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Our guest this week is wrestler, video personality, consultant and all-round good guy Simon Miller! Simon discusses his days running NRevolution magazine alone, working on X360 Magazine with Samuel, creating The Miller Report at VideoGamer and watching THQ burn from the inside in the early 2010s. It's quite a career!

This week's music is from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past soundtrack by Koji Kondo.

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Whoever wins, you lose! Vote for the winner in the Back Page Announcements channel.

This week's music is from the Bayonetta soundtrack by Norihiko Hibino, Takahiro Izutani, Masami Ueda, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Rei Kondoh, Takayasu Sodeoka, Erina Niwa, Yoshitaka Suzuki and Naoto Tanaka.

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The worst format in podcasting is back! For the first time since 2021, Samuel runs his pre-owned purchases past Judge Castle.

This week's music is from The World Ends With You soundtrack by Takeharu Ishimoto.

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Matthew gets a well-deserved week off! Samuel's former colleague, Retro Gamer editor Darran Jones, steps into the draft dojo to celebrate Sony's first gaming handheld device. You get about 30 minutes of Darran talking about his career, then an hour of background preamble on the PSP, followed by 90 minutes of draft. Apologies in advance for the length, but hopefully it's a good listen! Vote for the winner @backpagepod on Twitter.

This week's music is from the LocoRoco soundtrack by Nobuyuki Shimizu and Kemmei Adachi. 

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Two Giant Men, 20 categories, dubious rules! Time for another draft episode, this time on the subject of video game soundtracks. Vote for the winner in the announcements channel of the Discord.

Most of the music used in the episode is credited in real-time, but the track in the break is an orchestral Phoenix Wright arrangement by Noriyuki Iwadare.

Here are the categories we select from:

Album Categories

1. RPG

2. Indie game

3. Shooter (FPS or otherwise)

4. Platformer

5. Game soundtrack where music plays a key role in the gameplay

6. Fighting game

7. Bleep bloop (retro game soundtrack - 16 bit or earlier)

8. '90s as fuck

9. Cult favourite

10. Free pick

Track Categories

1. Theme tune that rips

2. Battle theme that rips

3. Earworm of any description

4. Features lyrics

5. Ambient open world or world map music

6. Rhythm action favourite

7. The Yoko Shimomura category for a piano absolutely popping off

8. Boss theme that rips

9. Free pick

10. The Game Over category (this must play at your funeral)

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Matthew speaks to one of his favourite authors, Stuart Turton. Hear about his exhausting creative process (seriously, you won't believe it), and what it takes to write a novel – including his latest, The Last Murder at the End of the World. Then, in part two, hear more about Stu's love of video games, which runs incredibly deep.

Samuel is away for this one. Matthew gets the name of the podcast slightly wrong at the start, but don't hold it against him.

This week's music is from the Return of the Obra Dinn soundtrack by Lucas Pope.

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This week's guest is IGN Managing Editor Rachel Weber, who probably has the most varied and fascinating career in games media of anyone who's appeared on the podcast so far. Hear about her transatlantic journey from OPM during the PS3 launch days to GamesIndustry.biz, Rolling Stone's Glixel channel and GamesRadar, before she landed at IGN.

This week's music is from the Lost: Via Domus soundtrack by Michael Giacchino.

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27 listeners' game purchases go on trial before the morally dubious Judge Castle. Can the defendants' even more compromised lawyer, Samuel Roberts, get them off (not in that way)? The worst format in British podcasting returns.

This week's music is 'PIMP' by Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, as well as the Games Court theme by listener Adam Saucier.

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Two top 10 lists of the best games of 2003, and loads of bullshit about Matthew's mini-fridge and Samuel's week of work experience in the fire brigade. The games chat starts at 1 hour and 27 minutes if you'd just like the lists without the nonsense.

This week's music is from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker soundtrack by Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi and Koji Kondo. 

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Former PC Gamer Senior Reporter Steven Messner is our guest this week! Hear about his epic reports of goings on in EVE Online and other MMOs – and that time the bastard Samuel Roberts betrayed him.

This week's music is from the Harvest Moon 64 soundtrack by Tsuyoshi Tanaka.

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Matthew played 70 hours of FF7 Rebirth, while Samuel played a measly 14 hours. How's it going so far? Expect mostly spoiler-free chat in this episode – we explain how we approached spoilers right at the start to put your mind at ease.

This week's music is from the FF7 Rebirth soundtrack by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu.

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This week's guest is former Edge editor Alex Wiltshire. Hear about his era of the magazine, as well as his time working at Hello Games and Mojang.

This week's music is from the New Super Mario Bros soundtrack by Asuka Hayazaki, Hajime Wakai and Koji Kondo.

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Matthew has finally become a big FF7 head, ploughing through Remake in January and now being 50 hours deep into Rebirth. Hear his (spoiler-free) thoughts on the newer game in this episode. Plus! Samuel plays Balatro and the Tomb Raider remaster, while Matthew also squeezes some Helldivers 2 into this episode.

This week's music is from the FF7 Rebirth soundtrack by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu.

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Time for our first draft episode of 2024! It's the turn of the PlayStation, one of the most important consoles in history. Listen to the episode, then vote on who picked the best 10 games in the pinned tweet @BackPagePod on Twitter.

This week's music is from the R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 soundtrack by Kohta Takahashi, Hiroshi Okubo and Asuka Sakai, plus the Tekken 3 soundtrack by Nobuyoshi Sano and Keiichi Okabe.

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Beloved guest Jeremy Peel drops by to discuss his new Patreon project, The Peel Perspective, as well as the art of writing a magazine or website feature about video games. 

Did we nail this episode? Ack, not *quite*. As Matthew put it after the edit, it's fine. We didn't entirely have the right energy for it this week, nor did we have a tight enough plan to conquer such a big subject in the second half. Always lovely to have Jeremy back on, though. 

This week's music is from the System Shock remake by Jonathan Peros. 

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Two top 10 lists of our favourite games from 2002 (based on UK releases)...and a slew of ridiculous anecdotes about working in Homebase and studying GCSE Drama. 

This week's music is from the Super Mario Sunshine soundtrack by Koji Kondo and Shinobu Tanaka, and the Ico soundtrack by Michiru Oshima, Koichi Yamazaki and Mitsukuni Murayama.

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Returning guest Ashley Day tells us about his love of the Sega Saturn, then gives us his ten favourite Sega developed (or published) games of all time. Spoiler alert: Football Manager 2009 doesn't make the cut.

This week's music is from the Shining Force 3 soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba.

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We've been playing The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Marvel's Midnight Suns, Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (just the demo, mind), Assassin's Creed Nexus and Foamstars in this far-reaching episode. Some nutritious games waffle to cancel out last week's nonsense mailbag episode.

Enjoy!

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After last week's belting return with the GOTY episode, it's time for something with far less meat on the bones as we roll out some bullshit gaming predictions for 2024.

This week's music is from the Persona 3 soundtrack by Shoji Meguro and the Nier: Automata soundtrack by Keiichi Okabe, Keigo Hoashi and Kuniyuki Takahashi.

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Our biggest episode of the year is here! Two top 10 lists of the best games of the year. More than three hours of pod, slightly later than planned (sorry about that).  

Thanks so much for your patience while we took a much-needed break – but now we're back! Expect a full plan of what we're making in January in the next few days, including the return of the XL and XXL episodes. 

This week's music is from the Cobalt Core soundtrack by Aaron Cherof. 

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After a short break, we're back with a fun (allegedly) holiday special to see out the year – featuring special guests, our favourite Christmas-themed games and the Back Page alternative GOTY awards.

This week's music is from Bayonetta Origins, Final Fantasy 16, Fable 2 and Bully.

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It's Matthew's first time through the original Final Fantasy 7. Ahead of the release of Rebirth in 2024, he explains what the hell is going on in disc one of this 26 year-old RPG, right up to the death of Aerith (and to a lesser extent, Cait Sith).

This is our last new podcast for three weeks! Thanks for listening all year – we'll be back soon. Free feed listeners can look forward to a couple of Patreon samplers.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu.

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Samuel and Matthew compete to pick the best selection of 10 licensed games, and discuss the wildly inconsistent history of games based on movies, TV shows, books and more. Matthew won this draft.

This week's music is from the Blade Runner game soundtrack by Vangelis and Frank Klepacki.

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The latest on what we've been playing, featuring Alan Wake 2, Chants of Senaar, Super Mario Wonder, The Talos Principle 2, the PlayStation Portal and the Oculus Quest 3. Plus: the last mailbag of the year! Who knows how this one ended up being so bloody long.

This week's music is from the Chants of Senaar soundtrack by Thomas Brunet.

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This week's guest is comedian, writer and streaming superstar Ellie Gibson, who talks us through her career at Eurogamer during the heyday of the PS3 and 360 era of games media.

This week's music is from the Sky Odyssey soundtrack by Kow Otani.

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A deep dive on the year's biggest PlayStation game with Dave Scarborough, sometime features editor of gamesTM.

This week's music is by John Paesano from the Marvel's Spider-Man 2 soundtrack.

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Rob Pearson of PlayStation Access is our guest this week. Hear about Rob's unusual journey to YouTube fame via print media, and how Charlie Brooker and Jon Blyth inspired his hugely popular top 7 features.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu.

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From GTA 3 to Silent Hill 2, 2001 was one of the best years in the history of games. In this episode, we each construct top 10s while sharing pointless details of our mixed fortunes as teenagers.

This week's music is from the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka.

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We've firmly entered silly season, and Matthew has finished Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. Does it change his take on the CD Projekt RED FPS/RPG? Find out in this episode, along with his early thoughts on Assassin's Creed Mirage, Samuel's thoughts on Resi 4's Separate Ways DLC, and both our thoughts on indie sensation Cocoon.

This week's music is from the Assassin's Creed Mirage soundtrack by Brendan Angelides.

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People Can Fly's Jamie Smith tells us about his career and things you only realise about games when you actually make them for a living. Then, in the last section, Jamie poses a series of impossible game design questions to both of us – see how we fare as backseat game designers!

This week's music is from the Call of Duty: Vanguard soundtrack by Bear McCreary.

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PC Gaming Classics reaches its conclusion (for now) as Jeremy and Phil pit Half-Life against Quake in the longest episode to date. Phil won the Review Wars segment of this one.

We hope you enjoyed this miniseries, and we're excited to see what Jeremy and Phil record next.

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The penultimate episode of Jeremy Peel and Phil Iwaniuk's PC Gaming Classics series finally lands on the free feed, investigating Trespasser: Jurassic Park, an all-timer Back Page draft pick.

Thanks to Jeremy and Phil for their hard work on this one!

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We've each played 25 hours of Starfield – here's what we thought.

This week's music is from the Starfield soundtrack by Inon Zur.

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Happy, you sickos? It's the latest entry in our bizarre Games Court format. 20 listeners submit their pre-owned game purchases (and lengthy life stories) to Judge Castle. Those found guilty will die...by Pikmin.

This week's music is by listener Adam Saucier.

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Matthew is ill! Forgive us while we delay the DS draft a week and take it easy with a 'what we've been playing' pod. Matthew has played 10 hours of Sea of Stars, so we discuss that, the Doom mod My House, Armored Core 6, Paranormasight and Dredge.

This week's music is from the Doom 2 soundtrack by Bobby Prince.

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One of our oldest and most popular episode formats returns as we count down the best games of 2016, a year that brought good news for everyone! Except Microsoft. And Nintendo. Everything from Uncharted 4 to Inside gets discussed in this bumper episode – alongside our (fairly dour) memories of the time working on magazines. Plus, hear all about Matthew's shattered knee at Gamescom yet again.

Note that there's a factual error in this episode: Samuel says they should make Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo perpetually available on modern formats including Steam, which it is. Last year's Capcom Fighting Collection features it, with online play!

This week's music is from the Hitman soundtrack by Niels Bye Nielsen and the Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice soundtrack by Noriyuki Iwadare, Toshihiko Horiyama and Masami Onodera.

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With Baldur's Gate 3 taking over the world, genre expert Jeremy Peel returns to discuss how RPGs have evolved since the days of the Infinity Engine games.

This week's music is from the Dragon Age: Origins soundtrack by Inon Zur.

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A simple but cheerful 'what we've been playing' joint this week, featuring Exoprimal, Telltale's comeback game The Expanse, 1998's Parasite Eve, Pikmin 4 and Viewfinder.

This week's music is from the Pikmin 4 soundtrack by Kenta Nagata, Asuka Hayazaki and Soshi Abe.

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Former Edge editor Margaret Robertson joins us to discuss working on the magazine from 2003-2007 and her career in game development. It's a good one, but then we always say that.

Check out Margaret's game in Fortnite, Fast Feud, at 2057-0506-7371, and follow her @marga_retro on Twitter.

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Matthew and Samuel compete to pick the best 10 games (and one HD collection) that represent the PS3's somewhat inconsistent library. Voting is closed, but Samuel won this draft by around 62% to 38%.

This week's music is from the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams.

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Kick back, take a seat! Pour yourself a tall glass of water. It's a simple update on what we've been playing lately, featuring Final Fantasy 16, Trepang 2, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code and Baldur's Gate 3. Plus: answers to a dozen or so listener questions.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy 16 soundtrack by Masayoshi Soken.

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Our guest this week is PC Gamer Senior Editor Wes Fenlon, who talks to us about his career in games media, his newsletter Read Only Memo, and Nintendo during the GameCube/GBA episode. You'll also hear about some of the differences between UK and US games media, and a quick therapy session for Samuel's benefit. A lot of ground is covered in this one – enjoy!

This week's music is from Cubivore, probably? Matthew edited this one and didn't say where the music came from – and at the time of writing he's on a train to Belgium, so who really knows.

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Two large gentlemen replay MGS3 and discuss where the upcoming remake could make improvements. Then, in section 2, we rank the bosses of this all-time classic. Spoilers follow for a game that's nearly 20 years old.

This week's music is from the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams and Hibino Norihiko.

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Samuel and Matthew revisit the classic Square Enix/Squaresoft RPG series this week. Well, the bits they know about, anyway. Plus, hear what Matthew thinks of Final Fantasy XVI, which just launched on PS5.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura, the Final Fantasy XVI soundtrack by Masayoshi Soken, the Final Fantasy XIII soundtrack by Masashi Hamauzu and the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers soundtrack by Hidenori Iwasaki, Ryo Yamazaki and Kumi Tanioka.

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On this month's PC Gaming Classics pod, Jeremy and Phil tackle 1997's Fallout, arguably the most important PC RPG of that decade. They delve into its creation, how its DNA filtered down to Bethesda's subsequent entries, and engage in another round of Review Wars (the voting for that one has closed, for those reading this on the free feed).

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From Doordash ads to a game that looks 90% like BioShock Infinite, these were our highlights from the past week of game reveals. Forgive some tired podcasting as we melt slightly in British weather.

This week's music is from the Persona 3 soundtrack by Shoji Meguro.

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Edge Deputy Editor Chris Schilling joins us for this week's episode. Hear about his career in games media, as well as the creation of the widely respected magazine. And yes: we talk about what it means when Edge awards a game a 10. Enjoy.

This week's music is from the Advance Wars soundtrack by Taishi Senda.

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Is the Xbox 360 the greatest console ever made? That's one of the questions we tackle on this episode before competing to pick the 10 best games on this celebrated platform across a variety of categories. Vote for the winner of the draft in our pinned tweet @BackPagePod. And remember, it's just a bit of fun! Except for the bits where we talk shit and take what the other person says very personally.

Samuel won this draft in the end, after Matthew initially took a strong lead.

This week's music is from the Mirror's Edge soundtrack by Solar Fields.

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Matthew has played 40 hours of the new Zelda, Samuel has played 10. How are they getting on? Expect very light spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom in this episode, and expect us to revisit this Nintendo epic in more detail at a later date.

This week's music is from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom soundtrack by Manaka Kataoka, Maasa Miyoshi, Masato Ohashi and Tsukasa Usui.

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Everything except Zelda is discussed in this week's episode! It's a 'what we've been playing' joint, featuring Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Arkane's Redfall and Mad Max (2015), among other things. We also answer a ton of mailbag questions, some of which we might've answered before – who knows! It's a low energy 6/10 pod, recorded on a Bank Holiday, but don't worry: next week's Zelda pod should be a good one.

This week's music is from the Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed soundtrack.

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Episode 2 of our Patreon-funded miniseries is now live! Jeremy Peel and Phil Iwaniuk take a deep dive into Westwood's Blade Runner adventure game.

Note that the Review Wars segment mentioned in this episode has already been voted on by our Twitter followers – hear about the result in the next episode in June.

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Monster collecting RPG Cassette Beasts just launched on Steam via PC and Game Pass, and on May 25th it'll also launch on Xbox and Nintendo Switch. To celebrate, returning pod guest Jay Baylis (the cursed Sonic and Pokémon episodes) talks us through the creation of the game.

This week's music is from the Cassette Beasts soundtrack by Joel Baylis.

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With Samuel away, Matthew and returning special guest Rich Stanton from PC Gamer build a hall of fame from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami's body of work.

This week's music is from the Resident Evil: Director's Cut by Makoto Tomozawa, Koichi Hiroki and Masami Ueda.

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Our popular series of best of lists returns with the 2015 edition, featuring two top 10s of the year's best games. Hear about Matthew and Samuel's burgeoning friendship during a press trip to Germany, and forgive us as we get tired towards the end of this episode since we recorded it on a Sunday night.

This week's music is from the Fallout 4 soundtrack by Inon Zur and the Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number soundtrack by The Green Kingdom (aka Mike Cottone).

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Samuel assembles a power ranking of the video games based on the Star Wars movies, and Matthew politely humours him.

This week's music is from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic soundtrack by Jeremy Soule and The Force Unleashed soundtrack by Mark Griskey.

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We're taking a week off, but we're pleased to present free feed listeners with PC Gaming Classics, a miniseries funded by our kind Patreon supporters. Co-hosted by Phil Iwaniuk and Jeremy Peel, this first episode focuses on System Shock 2. We'll roll out the rest of the episodes each month, and we'll be back next Friday with an episode on the best Star Wars games.

This week's music is from the System Shock 2 soundtrack by Josh Randall, Ramin Djawadi and Eric Brosius.

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In this week's episode, Samuel suffers from jetlag and Matthew suffers from living as we recount what we've been playing lately – everything except Resident Evil 4 Remake, anyway. Games discussed this week include Celeste, Diablo 4, Tchia, Resident Evil 1 Remake and a slew of PSVR 2 stuff. We'll return with our next regular episode on April 14th, though Patreon folk will get a new XL episode in the meantime on the best Mario moments.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy X soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano.

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We've both finished Resident Evil 4 Remake, which is out now! The original was an era-defining game for us, so what's the deal with this one? There are two parts here: a non-spoilery section then a more spoiler-y one. We hope you like it.

This week's music is from the Resident Evil 4 soundtrack by Misao Senbongi and Shusaku Uchiyama.

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Will Porter, former PC Zone editor turned game developer, is our guest this week. Hear about Zone's epic rivalry with PC Gamer and how it gradually died down over time, and learn about how Will ended writing for games like Alien: Isolation and Mafia: Definitive Edition.

This week's music is from the Mafia: Definitive Edition soundtrack by Jesse Harlin.

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The draft is back! Matthew and Samuel compete to pick the 10 best Capcom games from the developer/publisher's extensive and dazzling library. If you like fighting games, apologies in advance. Samuel won this draft.

This week's music is from the Devil May Cry 5 soundtrack by Casey Edwards and Ali Edwards, and the Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny soundtrack by Taro Iwashiro.

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On this week's shorter episode, Matthew fires through a whole bunch of recommendations to check out on 3DS and Wii U before their respective eShops close on March 27th. The full list can be found on Patreon.com/backpagepod if you miss any of it.

This week's music is from the Affordable Space Adventures soundtrack by Harry Damm.

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On this week's episode, we go deep on The Last of Us. We recall our original thoughts on the game from back in 2013 and give our verdict on the HBO show so far. Plus, Matthew talks us through his thoughts on the PS5 remake of the game. Apologies for the half-remembered bits. We'll explain the spoiler rules in the episode.

This week's music is from The Last of Us soundtrack by Gustavo Santaolalla.

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Former ONM editor and Mobilegamer.biz founder Neil Long is this week's guest. Learn what it was like to run the official UK magazine during the dominance of the Wii and DS era – including a few horror stories he'd probably rather forget.

This week's music is from the Dragon Quest 6 soundtrack by Koichi Sugiyama.

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Hi-Fi Rush, GoldenEye 007 and Fire Emblem: Engage are among the games we've been playing lately – those are the focus of this episode, along with a barrage of listeners questions that vary between insightful and nonsensical.

This week's music is from the GoldenEye 007 soundtrack by Graeme Norgate, Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland.

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After a long break, we're back with two top 10 lists from a year gone by – this time, 2014. Expect a mixture of mag recollections and deep analysis of the games that mattered (and some that didn't).

This week's music is from the Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney soundtrack by Tomohito Nishiura and Yasumasa Kitagawa, the Kalimba soundtrack by Magnus Damgaard, Lennart Kiel and Asger Kirkemann Strandby, and the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack by Shiho Fujii, Atsuko Asahi, Ryo Nagamatsu, Yasuaki Iwata and Kenta Nagata.

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Our most interminable podcast format, Games Court, returns! 18 listeners' pre-owned games purchases go on trial in front of the corrupt Judge Castle, who delivers shaky justice from the courtroom of his dubious island nation. From Zelda on the CD-i to Jasper Carrott's Golden Balls on Wii and DS, it's an absolute treasure trove of nonsense this week. Sorry again for the continued existence of Games Court.

This week's music is from the No More Heroes soundtrack by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda.

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From Indiana Jones to a Nintendo Switch successor, it's time for 23 more ridiculous predictions founded on no basis of fact whatsoever.

This week's music is from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild soundtrack by Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakai.

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2022 was undoubtedly a blockbuster-deprived year, but it was still a strong 12 months for games in many other ways. Our two top 10 lists reflect that state of affairs. Enjoy this nearly 3-hour rundown of our favourites from 2022, which is our last new games pod of the year as we take a short break ahead of January's episodes (though free feed listeners still have something cool to look forward to next week). Thank you for your support, and happy holidays!

This week's music is from the Norco soundtrack by Andy G.

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On this week's episode, we each try to assemble the 'dream' RPG party across 14 categories. Predictably, we each created nightmares instead. Matthew won this draft, if you're coming to this episode late.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu.

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Three-time special guest Andy Kelly is back to discuss his exit from games media after 18 years – and to share eight review scores he feels he got slightly wrong from his time working on PSM2/3, PC Gamer and The Gamer. Matthew and Samuel, meanwhile, shed some light on their own decisions to move on in years past.

This week's music is from the Disco Elysium soundtrack by British Sea Power.

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Samuel finally played Cyberpunk 2077 properly, and had a (mostly) good time! This episode interrogates CD Projekt RED's RPG/shooter, two years after release and firmly outside the shadow of the marketing campaign that made it such a headache to write about in the first place.

This week's music is from the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack by P. T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybyłowicz and Paul Leonard-Morgan.

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A Plague Tale: Requiem, FF7 Remake, Stay Out Of The House and Taiji are among the games discussed in our first 'what we've been playing' episode in two months. Plus: 80 minutes of listener questions are answered, from the irrelevant to the insightful. Enjoy!

This week's music is from the Gradius Advance soundtrack by Shigemitsu Goto, Hirofumi Sano and Kaori Takazoe.

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Ahead of the release of Ragnarök, we rank all the God of War games from 2005's original up to the 2018 PS4 entry – minus the odd Facebook game or mobile title. Enjoy. Once the new one drops, we'll discuss where it places in a future episode.

This week's music is from the God of War 2 soundtrack by Cris Velasco, Ron Fish, Gerard Marino and Mike Reagan.

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The wonderful 101st episode of The Back Page attempts to build a 5-game hall of fame from the entire PlatinumGames catalogue. Plus, Matthew has been reviewing Bayonetta 3 on Switch – hear his thoughts on the latest (but perhaps not greatest) entry in the hack-and-slash brawler series.

This week's music is from the Bayonetta 2 soundtrack by Norihiko Hibino, Takahiro Izutani, Masami Ueda, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Rei Kondoh, Naofumi Harada, Satoshi Igarashi, Hitomi Kurokawa and Takayasu Sodeoka.

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It's a clip show. Enjoy the clips.

Thanks so much for listening and supporting us. Here's to 100 more.

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Indie developer Lucy Blundell (One Night Stand, the upcoming VIDEOVERSE) joins us to discuss one of Matthew's favourite genres: the (usually) non-horny visual novel.

This week's music is from the 428: Shibuya Scramble soundtrack by Naoki Sato and Hideki Sakamoto.

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We're joined by Ben Hanson of MinnMax on this episode, who shares a bunch of great stories from his many years making videos for Game Informer's elaborate cover features. Hear about the times he visited Kojima Productions and Square Enix, among other studios.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura.

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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.

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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.

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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 Secret of Monkey Island soundtrack by Michael Land and Patrick Mundy.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Yoko Shimomura and Isao Abe.

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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.

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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).

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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 Chronicles X soundtrack by Hiroyuki Sawano.

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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.

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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 and the Will of the Wisps.

This week's music is from the Super Mario Odyssey soundtrack by Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii and Koji Kondo.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 mentioned here: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/ad-infinitum-handling-community-curation-on-a-cosmic-scale-in-dreams

This week's music is from the Persona 5 soundtrack by Shoji Meguro.

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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).

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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 by Kärtsy Hatakka and Kimmo Kajasto, and the Max Payne 3 soundtrack by HEALTH.

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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.

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Two top 10 lists of the best games of 2012, in our usual style. Love the podcast and want more? Head to patreon.com/backpagepod to unlock two additional episodes a month.

This week's music is from the Catherine soundtrack by Shoji Meguro, and the Kid Icarus: Uprising soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba, Yuzo Koshiro, Masafumi Takada, Noriyuki Iwadare, Yasunori Mitsuda and Takahiro Nishi. Our theme tune is by Barry 'Epoch' Topping.

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