That guy's a Maniac...

 We are back for Season 7! After looking over our listener stats and surviving the break, we're bringing actual structure to the pod this season, starting with our brand-new overarching theme: Status Effects in Video Games. In this premiere episode, we dissect how status mechanics like poison, silence, haste, and sleep mess with combat action economy in RPGs and survival horror games. But before we get technical, we tackle the big gaming questions of our era: Can you complete a Pokémon Nuzlocke in Kanto with literally zero Pokémon? What is the official Donkey Kong family tree canon (DK Jr., Cranky Kong, and Pauline in New Donk City)? Why did Patrick Stewart's hair keep glitching in Oblivion Remastered? Is NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 AI tech revolutionary or just photorealistic slop? Plus, we rant about Sims 2 pre-DLC expansions, $100 Dead or Alive swimsuit packs, and why game preservation on the upcoming Metal Slug collection is a win for gaming history. source https://podcasters.spotify...

Evening maniacs, it's been a hot minute but I thought I'd quickly post this as none of the FAQs, Reddit posts or even Bulbapedia or Serebii.net are really clear on how it works or are frustratingly vague or just plain ol' wrong. I've just earned the Tower Master Ribbon on my original Pokémon Diamond Rampardos in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, a mere five years after the game's release as part of this stupid mission . Now let's get into it step by step.

It’s That Guy’s A Maniac Looking Back, Looking Forward episode. We take the turning over of the year as the opportunity to look back at our video game predictions and resolutions from 2025 and then look forward to new games and beating old ones in 2026. Did we predict the Switch 2? Did the GPS Kingdom Hearts come out? Why were we playing darts with our 19 year-old girlfriend instead of solving MURDERS? Click through, look back, look forward. 

It’s the end of year Estival celebration and we’ve got a jam-packed show! We’ve got 36 video game-themed Christmas cracker jokes, we’ve got a brutal half-time Chrono Trigger round of That Guy’s a Mastermind and if that wasn’t enough it’s the 2025 TGAM Video Game Christmas Awards. Find out who scoops the wins in our six unique categories.

This week is dog pokémon, Herdier. Which we talk about for five seconds before a good old fashioned What Are You Playing? Richie’s delved back into Baldur’s Gate 3 and tried their hand at Balatro . Cunzy has been on a voyage of discovery with Kirby Star Allies and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond .

We re-talk about Hello Kitty being a British Schoolgirl, the symbiosis between jellycat and penguins and the pokemon Mantyke. Richie takes on Metal Kart 3 for the SNES in That Guy’s A Miltank. We then try to remember anything about video games.