Let's all hop along, hop along onto the wagon... why? Because we've got a trail to ride my friends, a trail to O-re-gon! And what'll we do on our way way over there? Why, we'll...

Get dysentery!

Get robbed!

Break limbs!

Get stranded!

Go hungry!

Die of thirst!

Get bitten by snakes!

...and fail to ford a few rivers!

Because that's the way it goes, down yonder O-re-gon way!

Guess what this episode's all about? If you were in elementary or middle school around when we were, you'll be having flashbacks about now to the greatest text-based edutainment game located in every school in the country right about now!

If not... hop on in and get your learn on! TO OREGON!

It's a-me... YOSHI! After 51 warm-up episodes, the hosts of the show have finally gotten enough podcasting under their belt, and are ready to tackle the most important game in history, SUPER MARIO WORLD!

Why is it the most important game ever? Well obviously, because it was the debut of ME, Yoshi! Not some stupid horse, not a sidekick, but the hero of the series. Letting that bumbling Mario get where he needs to, protecting him, eating everyone he can't beat by himself... let's be real, he'd never have found all those level exits without me!

Now, what did these two intrepid hosts think of my game, going back to play it? Did they like the new and expansive world? Did they love my auto-scrolling levels? Were they enthralled by the colored Switch Palaces? How did they enjoy re-visiting all of Bowser's minions?

There's really only one way to find out... twirl-jumping yourself over to hitting the Play button and checking it all out, of course! And don't you DARE think about sacrificing me to my doom just so you can make a particularly long jump! I REMEMBER....

It's-a-me, AGAIN! Geno and Mallow (and, I guess, Mario, Peach, and Bowser) are back (tell a friend!)... in SUPER MARIO RPG! Not to be confused with Episode 5 of our dear podcast, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

The heroic journey is undertaken once more, and our favorite heroes and all their early-Nintendo snark are ready to save the castle from Mack... I mean, Claymorton, and Smithy. With the help of Frogfucius and his KeroKero Cola... I mean, Frog Sage and Croaka Cola...

Ok, so there are definitely SOME things that changed, but overall? Like 95% the same game, and that 95% is glorious, and of the changes, beyond the renames, we got our very favorite thing... QUALITY OF LIFE improvements! (Sorry, Producer Lisa).

Was this a joy to come back to and play? (Spoiler: it was). Was it beautiful? (Spoiler: it was). Do we miss needing to save manually? No spoilers, gotta listen to find out THAT important detail!

A beautiful remake, an amazing original game, almost the entire script kept in-place, and a great Mario property... talk about a recipe for success! Jump in and hear the full thoughts!

Everyone remembers the lyrics to that famous song... "I come from a land down under, where rubies do gleam and lamps thunder..." -- that's the one, right? Well it should be, because the Cave of Wonder definitely qualifies.

We're going far, far into the future (look it up!) and to the land of Agrabah, to join everyone's favorite street rat and everyone's even-more-favorite monkey companion... DISNEY'S ALADDIN (and Abu!), to defeat Jafar, and have very little interaction at all with Genie, which is a crying shame. Darn you, Disney, and your pissing off of Robin Williams by breaking your word to him!

If ever there was a game that would do well with this crew, it's one with difficult platforming, stress-creating levels without save points, poor texture graphics, and significant differences depending on where you played the game. And this one's got it all!

What did they forget while playing? Why, the number one rule in Agrabah, of course..

Gotta keep

One jump ahead of the breadline

One swing ahead of the sword

Only steal what you can't afford (that's everything!)

Did they make it? Did they save the princess? Did they save Agrabah? Was Jafar defeated?

THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO KNOW! Hop on for this magic carpet ride, and give it a listen!

Fiiighting Trainers by moonlight... Maaaaking friends by daylight... Never running from a real fight... they are the ones called Pokémon!

What do you get when you cross a senile old man who can't remember his own grandson's name, a pair of eleven-year-olds who are cast out into the world to fend for themselves in a never-ending Battle Royale of literal MONSTERS, a pair of people who are out there to destroy you for really no good reason, and the world's most powerful creature (Magikarp)?

You get Pokémon Red and Blue, of course!

Comin' at ya from the good old Game Boy, we've got Weedle, we've got Rattata, we've even got ourselves an ONYX! Come one, come all, and explore the glory of a world that's just totally ok with kidnapping countless creatures, tossing them into pocket-sized balls, and making them fight for their lives until you decide you're done with them and discard them!

So grab your red-and-white ballcap, tell the old man what his grandson's name is, and go off and complete his life's work for him while he hangs out in his lab! IT'S POKEMON TIME!

Who's that jumping off the building up there?

Who's that calmly walking amongst a group of courtesans as though he's not quite obviously not one of them?

Who's that jumping into a pile of hay and saying "shhh, you can't see me in here!"?

It's Easy-O! Etch-Ee-Oh! Eez-yo! No, it's EZIO!

The hosts are back... err wait, what's that? It's an all-East-Coast VERY SPECIAL EPISODE? Featuring Host Chris and SPECIAL GUEST HOST PRODUCER HOST LISA? Woaaahhhh!

Freshly back from a tour across the pond, wandering along the other ponds (obviously I mean "along the canals of Venice, across the Atlantic Ocean"), living the Assassin's Creed 2 life for a while, and they decided to share it with us all, after playing through AC2 upon their return!

Where else can you get lessons on murder, technology, renaissance Italian politics and art, and relative comparisons of street widths in modern Venice, than on GAMES WE GREW UP WITH?

So cut off a finger, jump off a building, commit random acts of murder, and listen to a discussion of watching yourself be conceived in the past! It's Assassin-in' time!

Oh Kirby, you're so dreamyyyy... or at least, your golf course is! And what better way for a character who's known for being mostly marshmallow-cloud and gains power through eating enemies to celebrate the great athletic event that is golf, than... to turn into a golf ball with a variety of strange powers trying to get you to whack him into enemies and/or the hole!

This one's weird, but this one, at the end of the day, is also... golf. Golf with some power-ups and 16-bit graphics, and a decidedly Kirby tone to it. Yet another of the hosts' OG gaming experiences, and since they played it as kids on a cross-oceanic flight with no manual, likely almost as weird as Super Bonk at the time.

Was it great? Was it, as the kids say, "mid"? Was it an Albatross or a Double Bogey? Was it something else punny? You, "dear reader", will have to convert yourself into "dear listener", and find out from our sporting hosts as they dive into this pink-gridded, club-wielding, golf-y adventure!

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY, GWGW! It's our third birthday (how did that happen?!?), so we decided to put out a special Non-Rose episode that throws wayyyy back in our hosts' gaming lives!

Where else can you go to turn $700 into $10,000,000 than VEGAS, BABY? Or, more often... where else can you go to turn $700 into a sad $0 and end up on a bus out of town than VEGAS, BABY?

Welcome to Vegas Dream, where all your slow-moving text, badly-randomized cards, robbery-filled, chandelier-dropping visions of grandeur and glory can come true! Play Blackjack and lose to the dealer's high 20 & 21 rates, Keno where it'll take an hour to input your numbers that then don't hit, Roulette which... well, it works pretty much like a Roulette game, and Slots, where you can struggle to figure out what does or doesn't pay! It's Vegas in all its 1993 glory!

Jokes aside, this is a fascinating game with a lot more depth than it seems at first glance. Random events, risks to take, shows to be invited to, weddings to get stood up at, and millions of dollars to win to make your VEGAS DREAM come true!

And beyond that, this is one of the first games EVER that our hosts played growing up! On one side you had Super Mario Bros. (ed. note: Episode 15, check it out!), teaching you the nuances of platforming and patience (learned well by Host Chris), and on the other hand, Vegas Dream, teaching you the potential benefits of YOLOing it and hoping for the best (learned well by Host Katie)!

How does this 8-bit gambler hold up? How well does the episode work without a rose section? How many other games did the hosts have to go through before figuring out this is the one they meant to be playing? YOU'LL NEVER KNOW! Unless you listen to the episode, of course...

VEGAS, BABY!