Kole Ross

591: Spider Man: City Raid

January 6th, 2025  |  34 mins 54 secs

You likely don’t know what Spider-Man: City Raid is. It’s not a big budget title like the the Activision movie tie-ins or the recent Insomniac titles. In fact, it has no official license at all. It’s a Flash game made purely for the love of Spider-Man, and the Ram Jam song “Black Betty” for some reason.

590: Home Alone (PS2)

December 30th, 2024  |  41 mins 25 secs

This week we talk about the little-known PS2 game adaptation of Home Alone, a Christmas classic that was already super old in 2006 when this came out. But honestly, there’s very little there to talk about. Instead, we camp out on the taxonomical horror of a picture of corndogs Gary took ten years ago. Here’s the photo: https://bsky.app/profile/garybutterfield.bsky.social/post/3ldi4heqxj22c

589: Inspector Gadget

December 23rd, 2024  |  35 mins 36 secs

What is the meaning of Inspector Gadget? Is he basically a cyberzombie, which would explain the bungling? In which ball is the essence stored? This mostly on-topic episode is not afraid to ask the important and hard-hitting questions about this awful metal man.

ES 203: Reign of Fire

December 18th, 2024  |  32 mins 28 secs

Reign of Fire is the kind of movie you can’t make anymore, and that’s a good thing. It’s the perfect storm of post-9/11 militarism, and post-Lord of the Rings fantasy bandwagon chasing, with a pre-Batman Christian Bale and a pre-McConaughssaince Matthew McConnaughey. While a game about shooting dragons with guns should have a pretty high entertainment floor, this one absolutely biffs it by making you enact some of the worst vehicle combat to date.

588: Bubble Bobble Revolution

December 16th, 2024  |  45 mins 54 secs

Bubble Bobble is elemental! How could you screw it up? Well, they found a way. Bubble Bobble Revolution isn’t just bad because it’s nonfunctional… even if you could get past level 30, it would still be an ugly game that feels bad in your hands. But there isn’t much to say beyond that, so enjoy a meandering talk about what the existence of the Costco Guys says about our chances of the world getting better, ever.

587: The Brainies

December 9th, 2024  |  36 mins 1 sec

With a name like The Brainies, you know Gary brought this game to the show. He’s been on a tireless search for new Zoombinis, new Babos, new Creatures… any annoying little guy to dunk on. The problem is, the Brainies don’t got the sauce. And they might be kinda racist?

ES 202: My Stop Smoking Coach

December 4th, 2024  |  34 mins 32 secs

If you weren’t there, you might not understand that there was a small movement to market the Nintendo DS as a kind of PDA, with utility software being sold as games. This also included self improvement games like Brain Age. Hot on this trend, Ubisoft went all in with a line of “My Coach” games, with none being more baffling than “My Stop Smoking Coach”. It’s admirable to want to help people end a dangerous addiction, but this product shows that a game is not the ideal way to try to do that.

586: Poker Night 2

December 2nd, 2024  |  37 mins 12 secs

Poker Night 2 is a perfectly fine concept for a game, featuring beloved characters playing Texas Hold ‘Em after dark. Brock Sampson, Ash Williams, and Sam from Sam & Max are all delightful in their own right and you wouldn’t be blamed for wanting to hear their quips.

And then along comes Claptrap.

585: Pink Goes to Hollywood

November 25th, 2024  |  38 mins 1 sec

We’ve gotten mad at a lot of things on this show. Some of them just, some of them goofy. This might be the maddest we’ve gotten recently, trying to figure out what the Pink Panther’s whole deal is. Why has he been an enduring character? What does he even do? There’s zero information online, but this fucker is everywhere and someone needs to answer for it.

ES 201: The 20 Lost Levels of Joshua

November 25th, 2024  |  37 mins 51 secs

Wisdom Tree is an interesting company that makes very bad games about the Bible, but you kinda have to give them credit for reverse engineering Nintendo hardware. This GameBoy game, The 20 Lost Levels of Joshua, is attached to a GameBoy version of the NIV Bible, and it’s hard to tell which side of the cart is more riveting.

584: Shark Tale

November 19th, 2024  |  34 mins 19 secs

Shark Tale is a notoriously crappy DreamWorks movie, which is already a deck with a lot of low cards. But DreamWorks had this habit of making good-looking licensed games based off of these movies, and for some reason they are kinda beloved. That is a false idea, though. It’s a bad thing to believe, that this could have been good.

583: Hollywood Squares

November 11th, 2024  |  36 mins 35 secs

The NES saw a glut of games adapting popular gameshows, most of them developed by Rare. Improbably, Hollywood Squares is one of the more functional ones… albeit with some cuts. Gone are the stars! There’s nothing Hollywood about this! Additionally, Kole brings a chilling secondhand anecdote that might actually just be a straight up bummer.