Electronic Wireless Show

The Electronic Wireless Show podcast returns in 2023 with a new friend and a new format! We ran out of themes, so we're going to flip to a magazine format, where we discuss some current events as well as the games we've been playing. This week we talk about games on film, with everyone bloody loving The Last Of Us TV show and reports that Lara Croft will be hitting the small screen too. We also discuss the reasons a developer might have to come out and clarify that their game is, in fact, real. Plus: what is Forspoken, and why so graphics? Fear not, regular listeners: some things have stayed the same. Nate has built a strange tower on top of the Cavern Of Lies, within which we must pass his strange trials, and the episode ends with a check in with Henry Cavill and a new round of recommendations.

Today is a sad occasion, as Matthew is leaving the pod, and we take the opportunity to go on a short hiatus while we search for a replacement by making staffers perform tricks for our amusement, reality competition style. But though it be sad, it is an occasion nonetheless, which means Matthew is going out in style as we build the ideal video game character dinner party. Spoilers: there is a giant ant and a boat full of cocaine. As it's his last day, Matthew also does a fiendishly difficult Cavern Of Lies themed around secret endings. Which of us will end up dead and loaded onto the cocaine boat while the others beat a retreat?

As we leave the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and plunge headlong into the seasons of frozen toes and unceasing rain, there aren't many good wistful staring days left in the calendar. But not to worry, because The Electronic Wireless Show podcast has collected some of the best games for having a virtual stare, so you can do it from the comfort of your own home. This does necessitate us defining wistful first, although honestly I think I nail it out of the gate. Nate also provides this week's Cavern Of Lies mini-game, and a) he nearly beats me but b) he'd never heard of Thomas Was Alone, which is pretty funny.

You know who's cool? You, obviously, for listening to the Electronic Wireless Show podcast. This week we're talking about games that make us feel like proper cool people, just like you - who, I emphasise again, are a very cool person. Matthew is not cool enough to be here this week, but I am joined by Nate, who is the king of cool (and crabs). There's a Cavern Of Lies to test Nate's coolness, and we check in with Henry "The Vit" Cavill, but first, of course, we must litigate the different kinds of cool we feel, what counts as cool, and which games make us feel the coolest.

Following our Halloween special last week, The Electronic Wireless show podcast today moves away from the monstrous to the relatable (which in our case does not preclude monstrosity). We talk about the characters that we relate to most, and also I find a way to mention Saturnalia again. Tune in next week to see if I can keep up my streak! Matthew being away this week means that Nate takes on the role of the anti-Matthew, and we speculate about which games we think Matthew would probably find relatable. For myself and Nate the themes include sadness and drudgery. But there's good news, because Nate has remembered to make me a Cavern Of Lies this week! Hooray!

Happy skeleton war month, ya filty animals! This week on the Electronic Wireless Show we talk about dread, as in, the thing Matthew feels when confronted with glistening food, or when he knows he has to record a podcast with us. We talk about some cracking scary games, going a bit down the beaten track and away from our normal path of least resistance (talking about Red Dead Redemption 2 and BioWare games). We also have some spooky recommendations for you to spice up your Halloween! Plus, it's Nate turn to produce a Cavern Of Lies. More like Cavern Of Jump Scares! And we coin a couple of new euphemisms you're sure to work into your every day language.

We celebrate all three of us being back, but 2/3rds of us being be-plagued, by talking about rejuvinating the Earth - truly, the podcast host of us all. Inspired by new eco-friendly farming game Coral Island, which I've been playing this week, we talk about our favourite games that roll with an ecological protection theme. This is hard for Matthew, because he hates the environment (unless his immediate environment contains a can of Rio). Matthew comes through with an excellent Cavern Of Lies about trees and tree monsters in games, where he attempts to pull the illusive Double Beckford on us. Does he succeed? Listen to find out.

We're back with a bang, a villainous laugh, and a dose of coronavirus I've brought back from somewhere in Tenerife. The two week drought is broken with a shower of Electronic Wireless Show podcast rain, were we discuss the best villainous breakdowns we've enjoyed in video games. Matthew is sadly away this week because, while my coronavirus dose is mild, like the tingle of delicious Rio Tropical on your tongue, Matthew's is wild and aggressive, like a super-charged Electricity Cop. In his absence, Nate and I talk about some proper good villains, and even discuss some sensible things like evil cartoon monsters vs. villains you can sort of sympathise with. Handsome Jack? GLaDOS? LeChuck? Andrew Ryan? That's one hell of an awkward dinner party. Plus stick around for a Cavern Of Lies that proves Warhammer 40k is essentially the same as Tumblr.

This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we, prompted by friendly listener OurSuperior, talk about the best changes of eras in games. As you can imagine, this is an easier task for Nate than it is to me, because many of his favourite games are predicated around era changes. Thus I find myself in the position of arguing semantics. How the turn tables have turned. I'm able to win Nate around on at least one of my desperate bids to classify things that aren't eras as eras, although he does promptly shut me down on the most ridiculous one. It may surprise you to know that we don't actually talk about too many history games (although time travel comes up a lot). And stick around for a thrilling Cavern Of Lies. Will the Red Baron (me) be shot down at last?

We enter the new pod-century on the Electronic Wireless Show a man down, as Matthew won't be here for a few weeks. Not to worry, though, as myself and Nate are ever ready to hold down the fort. This week we're talking about our favourite cinematics in video games, a fitting subject because last weekend I saw the greatest piece of cinema yet conceived by man: Michael Flatley's Blackbird. I do spend quite a lot of time explaining Blackbird to Nate, but after that we do talk about some cutscenes and cinematics in games (as well as litigating the difference between the two, and Nate tries to remember the first time he saw a cutscene in a game that was in-engine rather than being pre-rendered). And today the Cavern Of Lies is a Cavern Of Justice, after we received a troubling missive from one [squints] Brond Coatwear?

Standing on the shoulders of giants (Brendy and Pip and everyone else who did the podcast before us) means we have reached episode 200 of The Electronic Show podcast! Wowzer! Thanks for being with us for this record-breaking feat. We asked for suggestions and received many excellent ones, but in the end we went with a suggestion from Jonathon which, at the time we recorded, I did not realise would be instantly revealed by the episode title. Cheers to you all! For such a potentially ridiculous theme, the lads have brought some quite serious and sensible suggestions to the table. I can't apologise enough. We do have a long discussion about Banana Man, and this week our Cavern Of Lies is a lovely special reader mailbag which I unfortunately introduce in an accidentally insulting way.

This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast we give thanks to listener Tom Fakelastname, who emailed in to ask us about the moral quandaries in video games that we feel are the most meaningful. Matthew isn't here this week, which means we are very well behaved. I talk about BioWare games a normal amount, and Nate tries (and, in fairness, succeeds) to find a way to make moral choices a thing that you can apply to the sort of games he likes. Not Age Of Empires II this time, though. Because there's no Matthew, I change the Cavern Of Lies into a cavern of moral judgement for Nate, and make him run a gauntlet of some of the most important choices in Dragon Age Inquisition with no context. He turns out to be both authoritarian and kind of wholesome as an Inquisitor.

Today's topic for The Electronic Wireless Show podcast comes from listener Alastair Fakelastname, who suggested we talk about some of our favourite brave last stands in video game history. We do discuss what constitutes a last stand for the purposes of our discussion, but not until quite some time into the podcast. Many things are thrown into the ring, from RTS classics to famous boxart. As digressions we talk about Nate's monstrous fish army, and the cool ska band I went to see. Matthew has crafted, once again, a marvellous Cavern Of Lies, this time themed around the screen-destroying survival game Vampire Survivors.

Welcome once again to The Electronic Wireless Show podcast. As a counterpoint to the episode on the nicest blokes to hang out with in games, we've decided to talk about our most hated NPCs (a bonus prize to anyone who can guess which is the one we all say first). It's an interesting one to discuss, because the line between intentionally annoying and unintentionally annoying can be very thin. Plus everyone tends to find different things annoying. Disclaimer: you are not annoying, any similarities you have to characters we find annoying are coincidental. A huge digression this week because it's Nate's birthday! Wow! So we talk about his birthday and dressing as lobsters. This digression also has an effect on the tone of the Cavern Of Lies this week, which is something of a Nate-stravaganza. This episode is not going to be welcoming if you've not listened to our podcast before.

I'm back from my holidays to record The Electronic Wireless Show podcast once again, and I've brought a reader email and a new tattoo of Murray from Monkey Island with me. These are both relevant, because the email from John suggests that we talk about the games that we'd like to play for the first time again - just erase them from our heads and encounter them anew. Thus, we discuss Lucasarts games like the Monkey Island series. See, I tied it all together. In fact, I'm not sure if I'd wipe Monkey Island from my head or not, because I can't be sure how much of my love for it is fuelled by nostalgia. Matthew has other concerns, though, because as is our usual fashion we spend some time discussing the question "what games would you play for the first time again?" more literally than is intended. What grave consequences would come from erasing certain things from your brain? What sort of person would co-host Nate be if he wiped the Civ games from his memory? Listen in to find out.

Alice is away this week, leaving the lads to their own devices to discuss the best nice blokes in video games. A coincidence? Who can say. What isn't a coincidence is the lateness of this week's podcast, which is a week late. That's Katharine's fault, folks, which probably automatically disqualifies her from any kind of 'nice' list from here on out. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. The winners in this week's edition of The Electronic Wireless Show, however, are numerous. Taking that nice engineer chap from Metro Exodus as the absolute pinnacle of 'best nice bloke-ness', Nate and Matthew have framed this week's episode as the four people they'd most like to invite to an afternoon pub trip. Who will make the cut? Listen to find out.

Matthew is away this week, which leaves me and Nate to take over The Electronic Wireless Show podcast and turn it into a big ol' tower with loads of flamethrowers. That's because we're talking about our favourite towers in games. This means we need to draw a distinction between towers (the gamified concept as most popularly complained about in Ubisoft games) and towers (the architectural thing). Luckily, games have a lot of both. Meanwhile, Nate's fish issue (fisssue?) is growing worse, I am enjoying the local acts performing on the summer bandstand, and we talk about Lord Of The Rings and Lord Of The Rings related things. What fantasy creature would you like to conjure into real-life existence? We both said orc.

Come with us now on a journey to our childhoods, as we talk about the games that make us feel the most nostalgic. The games we played as kids, or spent all-nighters on as teens. It's a surprisingly diverse list, and Matthew has one anecdote in particular involving the music of Danny Elfman that I genuinely think makes this a genuine must-listen episode. Do you have the same nostalgia games? Which ones instantly transport you to the past? This week we also get an important fish update from Nate, who has a tank full of monsters that it turns out are slightly less inbred than we thought, and also I made an unwise purchase. Matthew delivers a Cavern Of Lies that we have to navigate on pure instinct alone, like Luke turning off his targeting computer, and we have three good suggestions in our Recommendations section.

This week Matthew is away, and since he is the real agent of chaos, Nate and I have a remarkably sensible conversation about different weather and seasons in a lot of games. Who'd have thought? Not me. And in fact there is weather in all sorts of places you wouldn't expect to look. Don't worry, though, because we find time to talk about how our weeks have been, as well as a bit where I tell Nate there's going to be a survival crafting game set in Moria and he gets excited. Also, stay tuned for a Cavern Of Lies where Nate does a lot of cowboy voices. And shout out to John for sending in cheery EWS fan game Aquarium Assault: Dark Day For A Dogfish!

This week Matthew and Nate are both away, but luckily I'm joined by two very special guests to discuss our favourite games from Summer Geoff Fest and the Not E3 2022 steams and showcases this past weekend. Rebecca from our guides team has been doing exhaustive work doing live chats and roundups for almost all the streams, and Edders was actually out in Los Angeles to play some games and chat to people. He even saw St. Geoff in the flesh. Wowser! We go through quite a list of things, and I'm sure we've missed some of your favourites, so feel free to chime in. All in all I think we saw some cool stuff; good work to video games.