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Read transcriptSuperman Returns came out in 2006 and asked audiences a very sincere question: what if Superman, but sad? Brandon Routh brooded his way across the big screen, lifting improbable objects and pining for Lois Lane, and somewhere in a boardroom, someone decided this emotionally complex theatrical event needed to be a video game on four different platforms. Five if you count the Game Boy Advance version, which is technically a different game but we’re counting it anyway because we <del>paid good money</del> decided that we just needed to talk about it. The PS2 and Xbox versions let you fly around Metropolis, absorbing explosions with your face in service of a health bar that belonged to the city rather than Superman himself, which is either a genuinely clever design idea or the most passive-aggressive mechanic in superhero gaming history. The Xbox 360 version turned the whole thing into an open-world showcase for what next-gen hardware could do, which in 2006 meant “look at those buildings.” The DS version was a side-scrolling beat-em-up. The GBA version was something else entirely. Superman Returns contained multitudes, is what we’re saying. Joining me to dig through the whole sprawling, melancholy, city-defending mess is Adam Williamson, real-life friend, frequent Play Comics guest, and owner of a podcast idea that has been marinating for what I can only describe as a concerning length of time. Adam, I say this with love: at some point you’re going to have to actually make the thing. In the meantime, he’s here, the knowledge is flowing, and we’ve got a Superman game across half a console generation to get through. So settle in, try not to let the city’s health bar drop to zero, and let’s find out whether Superman Returns deserved better — from Hollywood, from the games industry, and honestly, maybe from all of us. Learn such things as: Did we finally crack the secret on how to make a good Superman game buried somewhere deep inside this one? Are real estate moguls the true evil in today’s society? Are you a deadbeat dad if nobody besides you knows that you’re the father? And so much more! You can find Adam on BlueSky @effectnotaffect and absolutely nowhere else except for on Play Comics where he writes comic reviews and appears on other episodes. Of particular interest to listeners of this episode are The Gimmick #1 and The Job #1. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. The next episode is going to be Garfield’s Nightmare and Scary Scavenger Hunt, so get your thoughts ready and over to me if you want to hear them in the show. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Big Game Saga Issue 2 and DC Specialcast for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who just wants the Supergirl movie to be good. Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcriptLook, at some point you have to respect the audacity of putting the entire Justice League on a Game Boy Advance cartridge. Not one hero. Not two heroes doing a buddy-cop thing. The whole league. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the works. All crammed onto a handheld that also had to share shelf space with Hamtaro games. That’s ambition. That’s vision. That might also be a cry for help, but we’re not here to judge. Justice League Chronicles was Ubisoft’s love letter to the animated series, which means it had genuinely great source material to pull from and a screen roughly the size of a Post-it note to work with. The Justice League animated series was the kind of show that made you sit down and watch it with your kids because it was actually that good, and somehow that energy had to survive the trip to a device that ran on two AA batteries. Here to help make sense of it all is Doug Adamson from The Monitor Tapes, a man whose podcast is literally named after the thing the Justice League uses to watch for trouble. Which means he was cosmically destined to appear on this episode whether he wanted to or not. So pull up a chair in the Watchtower, try not to touch anything that looks important, and let’s talk about a DC animated tie-in that had no business being as earnest as it was. Learn such things as: Does it really matter if you end up fighting against someone else’s villains? Does it really matter if you can’t pick how you’re going to pair off the League members? Does anything really matter when you’re getting to play one of the best cartoons ever made? And so much more! You can find Doug on BlueSky @themonitortapes.com, Threads @themonitortapes (although it might actually be DC Dave running those, I don’t know), his podcast The Monitor Tapes, and whatever else they decide to release over on Brick Crisis Network. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. The next episode is going to be The Multipath Advantures of Superman, so get your thoughts ready and over to me if you want to hear them in the show. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to The Earth 2 Podcast and The Last Comic Shop for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who would probably be the IT guy up in the tower who’s actually making it possible to pull all of this world saving stuff off every episode. Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcriptThis week on play comics we ask ourselves what happens if you you can’t decide what you want to make a game about. Should you just give up? Should you really dig into your soul and decide what you’re super passionate about? Should you look and see if there’s any other related media coming out that you can tie this game into? Or should you act like you’re at the end of five different boxes of sugary cereal and justice dump the mall into a single bowl and see what happens? There’s certainly one thing that I made my mind up about this one, and that’s how Perry Constantine from Superhero Cinephiles and Japan on Film needed to come by and help me make sure that I kept everything straight here. And it’s a good thing too because with more playable character than I want to count spread out across 7 consoles upon release and a few more as back catalogs were taken advantage of it would have been really easy to miss something here. So was there an actual story for this game? Or was it just a giant excuse to squeeze in as many tidbits as they could so the other kids would think they’re cool? You’ll have to listen to find out! Learn such things as: Is it possible to have too many characters to pick from? What happens when there’s an actually good original story? Are there any deep cuts that didn’t make it into this one? And so much more! You can find Perry on Bluesky @percivalconstantine.com, Threads @perconstantine, catch some of his writing on Sub Stack or Patreon, or his own podcasts Superhero Cinephiles and Japan on Film, If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Coffee and Comics and Once Upon a Geek for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who spent forever trying to make the Ninja Turtles show up.<iframe style="display: none;" src="about:blank"></iframe> Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcriptHave you ever wanted to live the cowboy life while staying comfortably parked on your couch with a controller in hand? Well dust off that old PS1 and join us on a tumbleweed-tossed adventure into Lucky Luke, the 1998 game that lassos the comic’s wild west flair and corrals it into glorious mid-poly action. This week, Insane Ian from the comedy music frontier rides into town to help Chris figure out whether this comic adaptation shoots straight or ends up misfiring into nostalgic absurdity. We’re mixing comic books, cowboy clichés, and just enough slapstick to keep the saloon doors swinging. It’s part retro gaming archaeology, part cartoon chaos, and part “why did this ever happen?” Come for the shootouts, stay for the laughs, and maybe learn a thing or two about how French cartoonists conquered the Old West one pixel at a time. Learn such things as: How does Lucky Luke’s cheerful swagger hides a deep existential dread about polygon counts? Is Jolly Jumper one of the few horses that Chris isn’t afraid of? Can readers today look past the very of the time racial attitudes of the Luck Luke comics? And so much more! You can find Insane Ian on BlyeSky @insaneian, his music on the Insane Ian Bandcamp page, his videos on the Insane Ian YouTube page (where you can hear if he’s played FF VII), and check out the Funny Music Project that he sometimes contributes to. Also give Ian the appropriate amount of crap for not having enough videos on that new channel, Insane Ian Comics Gaming, yet. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Gender Pop and The Last Comic Shop for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who probably needs a hug. It’s been a long year already.<iframe style="display: none;" src="about:blank"></iframe> Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcriptPicture this: it’s the early 2000s, the first Fantastic Four film is about to hit theaters, and someone at a video game developer says, “You know what would be the perfect way to capitalize on this intellectual property? A side-scrolling action game on the Game Boy Advance where Reed Richards appears to have been replaced by his less scientifically-inclined brother in law (close enough, give me this one) and the Thing is made entirely of texture-mapping nightmares.” Congratulations, you’ve just invented Fantastic Four Flame On! It’s a game that managed to take four of Marvel’s most iconic heroes and somehow make them feel more constipated than a chemistry lecture taught underwater. Joining us this week is the absolutely phenomenal Scott Niswander from NerdSync (the man who can explain the entire Marvel mythos while simultaneously making you question why the Human Torch doesn’t just solve every problem by setting it on fire) and It’s (Probably) Not Aliens (where not even Sue Storm’s force fields could save Ancient Aliens from the debunking). Together we’ll navigate a game so baffling in its design choices that you’ll start wondering if the developers were actually aliens trying to understand human entertainment and coming up just slightly short of the mark. Will our heroes discover that the Game Boy Advance’s technical limitations somehow made this game better than it had any right to be? Can Scott explain why this game exists in a way that doesn’t make all of our brains feel like Alicia Masters trying to sculpt in the dark? And most importantly, does “Flame On” actually let you catch things on fire in any meaningful way, or is it just an elaborate metaphor for combusting under pressure? Strap yourself in for an episode more chaotic than trying to explain Fox’s Fantastic Four continuity to anyone born after 2010. Learn such things as: How do you make the Human Torch work in a side-scroller without just turning it into a horizontal beam-spam simulator? Did Fox’s movie curse extend all the way down to the humble Game Boy Advance? How did Johnny Storm have time to do all this stuff considering the timeline of the movie? And so much more! You can find Scott at The NerdSync YouTube channel, on Twitter @NerdSync or on the NerdSync Patreon page. Also check out  It’s (Probably) Not Aliens to hear Scott and Tristan Johnson debunk Ancient Aliens. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads ,@playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Gender Pop and Distant Echos for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who would make Jiffy Pop with just his hands if he had fire powers.Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.