1up.com - 1up Radio

The thread is packed to the gills this week, as we open with TGS leftovers, Who's Beaten the Donkey Kong High Score This Week, the Michael Jackson MMO, Billy Blanks' Wii game, the iffiness of GOG.com's death and return, Netflix in Canada, and tangents, tangents, tangents!

It's a guestacular second episode of 8-4 Play as two of the industry's finest - former EGM/1UP scribe Shane Bettenhausen (now of Ignition Entertainment) and Kojima Productions alum Ryan Payton (now of Microsoft's 343 Industries) join us to give their thoughts on this year's Tokyo Game Show, the state of the Japanese game industry, Dante's new hair, and a whole lot more.

Frank Cifaldi joins the crew this week to eat candy and discuss Zap Paks. 1UP's TGS photo galleries get some attention, as do Batman villains Two-Face and Killer Moth. Also listener calls!

This week, we're calling our show the atOdds cast. Why? We get Mike and Travis from at1UP to join us in Sam's absence. This week Chris rags on PlayStation Move, Tina complains about Halo Reach, we all discover what impact KFC has in Japan, wonder what you all think of Medal of Honor being banned by the military, and Sharkey loves Lord of the Rings online. As always, we take some pretty damn good call-in questions and letters.

This week on The Sound Test, we recognize more recent game releases with selections from Etrian Odyssey III and the third Professor Layton game; new music from Monster Hunter Tri; an interesting experiment with Nintendo's Popeye, and a fitting end for Super Mario's birthday.

It's the big ol' Tokyo Game Show roundup with Ray, Scooter, Justin, and briefly, Alice. We go over Ray's big 3 "whats" (or "WTFs"): Yakuza, DmC, and Steel Battalion. Every other big announcement is talked about, too, including but not limited to Microsoft's hardcore Kinect games, The Last Guardian, Shadows of the Damned, Phantasy Star Online 2, and at the end, non-TGS impressions of Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Kirby's Epic Yarn. "Epic yarn" might be a good name for this episode, too.

Special Guest and 1UP.com podcast-legend Garnett Lee joins the 8-4-some in a game-by-game analysis of everything at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show, including Tactics Ogre, Parasite Eve, Yakuza, Castlevania, Monster Hunter, El Shaddai, Mega Man Universe, Child of Eden, and more. And before you start, be sure to listen to Weekend Confirmed Ep. 26 over at Shacknews.com to get the first half of our TGS 2010 discussion!

We discuss where we've all been: LA, PAX, and where we're going: TGS. Sam talks about what he's looking forward to seeing, like The Last Guardian, and an empty Black Ops booth. The group is missing Chris' presence, but Alice is kind enough to join us.

Retronauts' penultimate episode sees Parish, Cifaldi, Kohler, and Maragos chatting about the NES's silver anniversary at PAX. Then Sharkey and Barnholt join the lovefest in the studio. After 170 minutes of this nonsense, you'll be glad to see us go away!

Ray welcomes Matt Leone and Justin Haywald back to the office following their respective road trips, and gets right into the news with both of them. Discussions include Duke Nukem Forever, the also-long-awaited MST3K-infused Darkstar, Stardock's layoffs, PS3 "jailbreaking," the sequel to Dissidia Final Fantasy, Noby Noby Boy's creator stepping away from the industry, and, you know... more!

Runic's Max Schaefer is the special guest this week as we examine the RPGs of GamesCom and PAX. Travis Williams joins Kat to ask Schaefer all of the burning questions you might have about Torchlight II, such as whether or not it will feature a monkey pet this time around. Scooter also drops by to talk Deus Ex, Guild Wars II and The Witcher II, proving once again that it's always a good time to talk about PC RPGs, even with TGS looming on the horizon.

Mike, Alice and Justin are back from their road trip to PAX and the three make sure Travis gets an earful of what he missed as the expo dominates the majority of the show. The group end the show with plenty of game talk.

With the fall game season ramping up, it's time for the Sound Test to recognize some recent releases in its own way. Kingdom Hearts is featured via a piano piece; music from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World debuts with a rocking track from Anamanaguchi, and Mafia II rounds out the show. In between are selections from a Suikoden celtic collection and NeoGeo shooter Pulstar.

The bulk of the 1UP staff is gone this weekend, but Ray still pulls in Scooter and Scott Sharkey for this week's roundup. There's much to be discussed about subjects such as the possible StarCraft and BioShock movies (and many others), the new Xbox 360 controller, Nintendo's Mario All-Stars revival, plus new impressions of Call of Duty Black Ops and Sony's Move launch games.

The gang reunites after too long apart. We celebrate with good discussion. Capcom's cutting out the racism! Valve made a fairy game! Acclaim died, again! And for Recession Gaming: Robot wants fishy! All those exclamation points plus community questions in this week?s Oddcast. It's good to be back.

Alan Johnson is headed to PAX as an official representative of Telltale Games, but not before he swings by the 1UP offices to sit in on this week's at1UP. The crew discuss the newest 1UP blog, For the Love of Game, and give details about this year's PAX Meetup.

The news runs a somewhat typical gamut this week, from annoucements (DeathSpank 2), delays (FF XIV) and cancellations (This is Vegas), to more heady stuff about downloadable content, Portal in the classroom, and theorizing about the next Yakuza game. Scooter Nguyen and Jeremy Parish join Ray, along with special guest Aram Jabbari, PR manager at Atlus USA, who also lends insight to the discussion about Capcom trying to prevent PR disasters earlier and the pros/cons of digital distribution.

Tactical RPGs? Strategy RPGs? Whichever is the proper term, Kat, Jeremy, Ray and special guest Christian Nutt sit down to discuss the ups and downs of one of the nerdiest RPG subgenres. The crew also takes a look at the recently-released Ys Seven, but not before Travis Williams and Scott Sharkey stop by to share their thoughts on the recently-announced Neverwinter reboot by Cryptic. It's an episode so huge that we go ten full minutes over our usual runtime.

Alice joins Jade, Mike, and Travis this week to discuss 1UP's Cross Country Road Trip and bad writing in StarCraft II. A few listener calls liven things up, and Final Notes closes things out with a couple of British comedy recommendations.

After a brief hiatus, The Sound Test returns with some soft selections from the Darius Burst remix album, new music from the Final Fantasy XIII Piano Collections album, some indie flavor applied to Illusion of Gaia, somewhat retro electronica from Zanac, a live Persona piece, and the not-so-soft Marvel Vs. Capcom Mix Tape.