For better or for worse, we've talked a lot about Final Fantasy on this show, but never quite like this. Eleanor joins Jon to answer the most pressing question facing the series today: Which protagonist would be the best to marry? Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming…

Whether you're cutting giant mechs in half, using a motorcycle as a pair of swords, or just taking in some breathtaking visuals, games with SSSStyle stick with us for a variety of reasons. The crew discusses their favorite stylish games! Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer…

“Late is just for a little while, suck is forever.’ Right?” - Gabe NewellDoes this axiom work for all delayed games? Let's discuss.

Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questions, like what are you playing this week? It's the season for love, and what do we love more than thinking about which gaming characters should get together and hold hands. Join us for this dive into our f…

Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questions, like what are you playing this week? A fearsome winter illness is cutting through the Limited Run offices, leaving us with a post-new year's 1-on-1 between our two legacy hosts. What gaming sins will …

Superpowers and video games— they just make sense together! But not every hero has a great game to accompany their legendary stories... so how would one avoid that? And what do we like about this genre, anyway? This episode features Jeremy Campbell, Limited Run's Junior Project Manager.

Licensed games get a lot of crap. We're talking today about the good ones. Join Jon Smith, Jared Petty, Eleanor Mithun, and Nathan Fry for an LRG celebration of 102 Dalmations, Batman, and Dynamite Deka.

If we had a nickel for every time a platformer spun off into a franchise, we have like 2 or 3 nickels, which is a little weird. Anyway, let's talk about Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood and introduce Jon to the world of Archie Sonic.Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answe…

The Game Awards are coming, and we're sure you've been itching to know what we think should win. Take a journey through select categories with us, and voice your disagreements in the comment section below!Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questi…

Happy American Thanksgiving! While you were at home enjoying time with friends and family, we were hiding in the guest bedroom playing Super Mario 64 DS. What were your favorite games to hide away with during the holidays?Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most c…

If we had any creative control over a Legend of Zelda movie, this is what it would look like. We also D'urged this week.Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questions, like what are you playing this week? SUBSCRIBE ► http://bit.ly/LRGYT…

Let's hear it for the boys! This week's episode of Unlimited Runtime is all about our favorite gentlemen of gaming, from Wyll Ravengard to...Carth Onasi?Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questions, like what are you playing this week? SUBSCRIBE …

We're having a wonderful time with Super Mario Bros. Wonder, so let's ruin the magic and fight about which Mario games are good. Unfortunately for us, all of them are fantastic.Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questions, like what are you playi…

Who doesn't love a good comeback? Welcome to Unlimited Runtime, the official Limited Run Podcast, where four brave games industry employees answer gaming's most challenging questions, like what are you playing this week?It's all about sequels in this premiere episode. Which game do you think deserves one?This episode features Joe Modzeleski, the De…

When did the lie that girls don't play video games gain credence in America? I remember seeing little nerds of all genders in arcades in the early 1980s, so that fallacy must have taken hold around the time that the Master System arrived. Certainly that would explain why these two games, both of which featured playable female casts in their origina…

An unlikely star emerges in this week's Master System episode: The Sega Sports Pad. Required for (but not bundled with!) Great Ice Hockey, this analog-ish trackball controller ultimately didn't have much purpose in terms of deliberate tie-ins, but thanks to its alternate mode it proves surprisingly effective with a number of other titles, especiall…

A pair of games based on popular media works? Well, almost. Action Fighter clearly draws its inspiration from 1970s James Bond and his transforming Lotus Esprit, but unlike James Bond 007 for Multivision, it doesn't wear the actual Bond license. It's a much better game, though. Drawing heavy inspiration from the likes of Spy Hunter and (gulp) Xevio…

I thought the main feature this week would be TransBot, a pretty OK shooter based on a pretty good arcade game that rectifies the failings of Orguss for SG-1000 while basically swiping the concept wholesale, but no. TransBot is fine. The main feature, however, turned out to be F-16 Fighting Falcon, a game no one would reasonably ever want to play, …

Three episodes into the Master System run and already we have some familiar sights—but understandably so, since each of these games comes to Master System from arcades. So, while we may have seen Choplifter during our SG-1000 survey, we certainly didn't see this version of it; Sega based the older, Japan-only release on the Apple II game, while thi…

Sega leads off its non-pack-in Master System lineup with a solid conversion of an arcade masterpiece and a respectable original title: Fantasy Zone and Ghost House. While the former suffers some compromises in the move from System 16A arcade hardware to the less powerful home console, it retails its key features, and its charming personality still …

Well, here we go. I've already covered Sega's first console, the SG-1000, in comprehensive (if retrospectively inaccurate at times) details. Now, here we have the sequel: The American adaptation of the Mark III upgrade to SG-1000, the Master System. Or the Sega System, if we're being strictly accurate. Beginning with this episode, which covers the …

We end NES Works 1988 here with a game that (probably) actually shipped before December 1988 in scarce quantities. Aw, it's Nintendo's very first high-demand holiday rarity! They certainly would return to that well over the years. It's hard to say where to place this release in the ’88 timeline, because Nintendo originally announced Zelda II for a …

A lot of shenanigans happening with the NES timeline here at the end of 1988, a situation that I'll explore more next episode. For now, it's worth noting that this episode brings us: Two games that may or may not have actually debuted in the U.S. in December 1988, and Two games from the same franchise, possibly released simultaneously by different …

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Time for a Castlevania retrospective. As NES Works 1988 winds down, Halloween 2022 seems like the perfect time for a proper look back at Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, one of the most ambitious and frustrating games of the NES era. The second of the NES's "weird sequels," Simon's Quest combines a lot of dif…

Sunsoft blew our minds with Blaster Master, but the company did not suddenly become some 8-bit powerhouse after releasing that game. Here's the rocky portion of their road to greatness, a pair of NES conversions that will leave you scratching your head. In the case of Platoon, you'll be left wondering why they thought THIS license was suitable to a…

The girls are back in town! Get a sneak peek at a revolutionary new take on brawling with Limited Run Games and the WayForward crew!

Holey moley! Meet Press Run, Limited Run Games' new UNLIMITED publishing branch. Join the minds behind the madness, Jeremy Parish and Josh Fairhurst. in an exclusive interview, then hear from two of our new authors, Christ Kohler and Kurt Kulata, as share share previews of their upcoming books.

A curious release this week, as we come to a game that shipped twice for NES: Once with Nintendo's approval, and once illegally. Ever the rogue, that Indiana Jones. Like Tengen's early conversion of Gauntlet, Temple of Doom adapts an arcade game but makes quite a few changes to its structure, format, and objectives. Capcom didn't have the monopoly …

One of December 1988's all-timers arrives this week, and while it may not be the best-remembered of the bunch (not when the other two big releases belonged to huge ongoing franchises), but I'd argue that it's the best and most polished. It's also the most fearless; Bionic Commando didn't so much ask players to learn an entirely new style of platfor…

Two games about American youths wasting their lives. Two games with various ties to Atari. Coincidence? Yes, actually. Sometimes, this stuff just happens. Skate or Die! may bear the Ultra Games branding, but it really owes its existence to Electronic Arts—and ultimately, to the former Epyx crew that EA hired up when Atari Corp. sabotaged that compa…

In this episode, I learned that the Power Pad is not really designed for use on hardwood floors. Bring back that deep-pile ’70s shag, baby. My feet are killing me. Super Team Games gives us the last of Nintendo's casual-appeal titles for 1988. There's still one final Nintendo-published game for the year, but it's kind of the opposite of casual-appe…

This week we have a pair of perfectly tolerable games that seemingly no one remembers. Yes, by late 1988, the NES library had grown sufficiently large that it could contain games beyond "brilliant" and "execrable"—works of competent mediocrity doomed by their lukewarm nature to be relegated to the dustbin of obscurity. Cobra Command takes a mundane…

I can't believe I completely failed in this episode to draw attention to the fact that Dr. Chaos is, in fact, a Superman villain. But then again, both games this episode read like latter-day comic book villains: Good-hearted souls with the best of intentions yet who somehow strayed from the straight-and-narrow path and now simply cause pain and suf…

It's time to talk DOOM, DOOM II, DOOM 64, DOOM RPG, DOOM 2016, and DOOM Eternal with IGN's Ryan McCaffrey.

Get inside the best version of one of the best games of all time with Jared and IGN's Jonathon Dornbush, host of Podcast Beyond!

Remember 1942? That really bad top-down shooter? Capcom would prefer you didn't. And, to wash that bad memory from our collective mind, we have its sequel, 1943: The Battle of Midway, simultaneously a sequel and a heartfelt apology for that previous misstep. Although this arcade adaptation fails to carry over the multiplayer element from the origin…

Sunsoft gets a major glow-up this episode after a mediocre start as a publisher of ancient arcade ports and one neat-but-meager light gun shooter. No one would accuse them of half-assing it this time around, though; Blaster Master shot instantly to the top of the NES all-time greats list as soon as it debuted, and it still holds up remarkably well …

If Super Mario Bros. was the culmination of the Famicom's early history in Japan, Super Mario Bros. 2 for NES served the same role here in the U.S. Debuting as the console hit critical mass in time for its first major holiday season in America, SMB2 sent players into a huge, imaginative game world that they could tackle with their choice of four di…

By a perfectly timed request by patron TheyCallMeSleeper, this episode arrives just in time to be positioned between this channel's coverage of Super Mario Bros. and its American sequel. Of course, this Japan-only sequel has almost nothing to do with that latter game besides the addition of Luigi as the Mario Bro. whose controls and physics turn hi…

The Famicom finally reaches maturity with the arrival of Mario's greatest adventure—and perhaps the greatest action game anyone had ever created to this point in history. Pushing the Famicom hardware to its absolute limits, Super Mario Bros. would become one of the most beloved games of all time and transformed a character that began as the star of…

As we head into the final quarter of 1988, we have three classic Nintendo games appearing on what is decidedly NOT a classic Nintendo console. Atari published ports of three vintage Nintendo creations (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, and Mario Bros.) on a variety of platforms in late 1988, including the 2600, their various 8-bit platforms, and as …

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back with a vengence, so we grabbed Tim Gettys of Kinda Funny and Seth Macy of IGN for an hour of turtle power!

Capcom kicks off one of the most important creative threads of the NES's history: Their collaboration with Disney, back in the days when Disney was simply an animation studio struggling to reinvent itself for a new era rather than an all-consuming media megalith. Ah, but this isn't really a Capcom Disney game, is it? Appearances (and packaging logo…

A collection of interviews with fans from all over America, special guests from WayForward and My Life in Gaming, and LRG employess all stitched together from the Limited Run Retail Store grand opening event.

Continuing the trend of "games converted badly to Famicom in 1986 and published in America two years later," we have Bits Laboratory's disastrous adaptation of Activision's Ghostbusters. A fun, frothy, fast-paced little confection in its original Commodore 64 incarnation, Ghostbusters becomes a miserable and tedious experience on NES, bogged down b…

More newcomers arrive on NES this episode, each bringing a musty conversion of an even older original work in tow. Kemco-Seika makes its NES debut with a two-year-old port of First Star Software's Spy Vs. Spy, which kinda-sorta puts a bow on the two-player trend of NES software by way of a competitive espionage adventure. Just as dated is the debut…

It's two for two for the road this week with Bubble Bobble, a game specifically designed to be played with another person, and Racket Attack, the second-ever NES tennis game which, like Nintendo's Tennis, offers support for doubles play (though not competitive play). Amidst all the moral panic about the way video games were rotting the brains of Am…

The prevailing theme for NES games in 1988 has been multiplayer. From Contra to Life Force to Jackal, many of the best games for ’88 played best with friends. (That was probably also true for games that weren't published by Konami, even.) Fittingly, episode 88 sees not but three games that uphold that trend. First, there's Jackal, a widely overlook…

The machines have risen, taking control of this trio of games and obviating humanity altogether. Well, almost altogether. R.O.B. at least demonstrates the value of mankind working together, hand-in-, uh, claw with its new synthoid overlords to defeat the vile Smicks in Robot Gyro. As for the other games, well, they're all about robo-kind's fight fo…

Although I've previously covered The Tower of Druaga on Game Boy Works, this version precedes the portable rendition by half a decade and stands as the more towering achievement of the two. So to speak. Another solid arcade-to-Famicom conversion by Namcot, Druaga's move to consoles felt like a figurative as well as literal homecoming: As an arcade …