Abject Suffering

The Biker Mice from Mars was an also-ran in the Turtles boom of the early nineties. Its premise was exactly what the title implies, and it relied on the idea of bikers being a lot cooler than they actually are. But given any chance to talk about the Turtles, we dig into the missed potential in not focusing on the TEENAGE part of TMNT.

Panic! isn’t really a game, it’s a mouse training program with some context-free visual gags. Faced with the possibility that disliking this makes us sticks in the mud, we talk about why this presentation is a disservice to the very necessary emotion of whimsy.

We’ve done most of the major Christmas-themed games, so we had to dig deep and find some of the worst slop Steam could provide. Satan Santa is an asset flip game that makes generous use of AI in its text and marketing materials. A demon has replaced Santa and a kid needs to walk really slow about it.

Rock n’ Roll Racing is a game that people love. It’s pog monsters doing combat racing from an irritating isometric perspective, set to SNES chiptune renditions of classic rock songs. For what it is, it’s hard to find too much to complain about… so we talk about Gary’s ongoing crisis of whether or not he should become best friends with his dentist.

Everyone has to start somewhere. For Cliff Blezinski, starting meant making a pale imitation of Shadowgate called Palace of Deceit: The Dragon’s Plight. Playing it is a master class in what makes Shadowgate good. But you can’t be too hard on the kid for it, he was sixteen. Be hard on him for the things he said and did later.