I know that watching Family Guy has fallen out of the zeitgeist, but you're missing out on some prime Millennial-targeted humor if you're skipping it.  On this past Sunday's new episode, "Single White Dad", Peter Griffin gets his old Nintendo Entertainment System out of storage to share "the best video game of all time", Donkey Kong, with his son.  Chris is not impressed with it though, asking about the missing microtransactions that will slowly bankrupt the family and the lack of children screaming racist taunts into his earpiece.  This leads to some classic Griffin family hijinks when the two team up to build a live action Donkey Kong level on their house.  Oh, that Peter!  When will he learn?

Nintendo dusted off the megaphone earlier this month and announced a lot of new games and remasters, so this week on the podcast we're finally getting around to discussing it all.  From Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe to the shadow dropped Metroid Prime Remastered to the collection of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games, there's something new/old for everyone. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

As I said on our most recent podcast in which we tore into the re-release of GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo Switch and the Microsoft Xbox platform, replaying the classic Nintendo 64 game has sent me down the rabbit hole on all things GoldenEye.  I rewatched the movie, listened to the soundtrack, watched making-of videos both deep dive and high level, and much more, so I knew I had to put the best of these things together here to share. It's a collection of retrospective videos, re-orchestrated music, technical breakdowns, and alternate versions. Enjoy!

The first video above is a post-mortem of the game's development presented by Director Martin Hollis in which he spends an hour on a deep dive of the game's inception, initial planning, development, testing, and release. There's some fun stories in there including how the game was initially reported to be a Super NES title, how the game was too ambitious for its own good, its Virtua Cop origins, and a last-ditch attempt to fix a critical bug during lot check. The second is a short documentary produced but cut from the original release of the Rare Replay compilation, but was leaked online some time ago after GoldenEye was cut from that package. It's only appropriate that it lives on now that the game has been included after all these years.

As Twitter's owner continues to gradually destroy the service with his impulsive ideas, greedily cost-driven policies, and eroding safety measures, it seems like it's only prudent to have another social media profile ready to go.  I've set up a PTB account on Mastodon at @[email protected].  It works like the Twitter account where I post new PTB content and carry on with followers and those I follow with fun conversation.  I'm staying active on Twitter as well until it finally all falls apart in whatever form that takes, but please consider the PTB Mastodon account if you've left Twitter and want to keep up with PTB activities.  Of course, there's also the PTB RSS feed for those who want that, too.  With Twitter on the verge of disabling auto-posts from blogs and game consoles, the RSS feed is the best way to keep up with new PTB articles and podcast episodes as they are posted to the site.  I'll have to manually post about new articles on Twitter and Mastodon later in the day as I have the time.

Nintendo, Microsoft, EON Productions, and who knows who else finally made a deal to bring the 1997 shooter GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 back for a re-release on Nintendo Switch and the modern Microsoft Xbox platform.  On this week's podcast, we're shooting in and out through post-Cold War Russia to explore which version of the game plays better today, which cheats are still available to the skilled player, how much fun we're still having with this game more than twenty-years later, and so much more.  Join us for 0075 minutes of discussion.  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

Pedro Pascal is earning accolades for his performance in HBO's The Last of Us based on the Sony PlayStation games from Naughty Dog, but Saturday Night Live has a sneak peek at HBO's next project for Pascal, and wow it's an unexpected departure.  I know the idea of a gritty Mario adventure is an old joke at this point.  It's been the subject of Internet humor for decades and Nintendo itself approved the idea for the 1993 Bob Hoskins / John Leguizamo film Super Mario Bros., but to see this much time spent on something so detailed on mainstream television is just another indicator how video games have truly arrived in pop culture beyond our gaming community bubble.