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Video game licensing runs on a very simple equation: if a popular franchise exists, and a handheld system exists, someone will eventually put a game together and slap on a release date. That’s probably the story behind Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour, with Konami treating the whole affair with the enthusiasm of checking a box on an extremely profitable to-do list. It was the franchise’s first outing on the Nintendo DS, arriving with the confidence of a company that already knew the math worked.

The pitch itself barely needed a pitch meeting: take the actual Duel Monsters card game, cram in over a thousand cards, and let the DS’s two screens do what a real card table always wished it could, which is render your monsters in flashy 3D up top while the actual decision-making, deck construction, knowing what a Trap Card does, happens down on the touchscreen below. The story loosely resets you into a remixed version of a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament arc, because apparently even a game that’s essentially “trading card simulator” still needed somebody to kidnap somebody, and wireless dueling and card trading rounded things out for anyone who wanted to bankrupt a friend without leaving the couch.

Making the trip through Battle City with me is The Gaming Anthropologist, who’s been out in the field studying gaming culture the way some people study a subject that actually pays.

So build your deck, set a face-down card of your own choosing, and let’s find out whether Nightmare Troubadour actually captured what made Duel Monsters worth dueling over, or whether “the license existed and so did the hardware” was doing all the heavy lifting.Continue Reading

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By 2005, Konami had made three TMNT beat-em-ups based on the 2003 animated series, which is the kind of commitment usually reserved for tax filings or long-term relationships. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare landed that November on GameCube, PS2, Xbox, and Nintendo DS as the trilogy’s closer, and Konami sent it off in style by giving it the series’ first E10+ rating, as if four years of shell-based violence had finally crossed some invisible threshold of Too Much.

The game loosely adapts the show’s third season across four “Episodes,” which means the Triceratons invade Earth, Agent Bishop kidnaps Splinter for reasons that presumably made sense to somebody in a government facility somewhere, and Shredder shows back up to remind everyone that retirement isn’t really a thing that happens to ninja warlords. Along the way you can pour experience points into skill scrolls, transform into a Dino Turtle or an Ultimate Turtle depending on the mood, and, if you clear the first Episode, unlock a modified version of the 1991 arcade classic Turtles in Time, which is Konami’s way of saying “here’s the good one, in case this one doesn’t land.”

Joining me to sort the Triceratons from the Foot Ninjas is Pierce Lydon of Spawnography, the podcast where he and George Marston work through Todd McFarlane’s entire Spawn mythology one hellish arc at a time. Pierce has already survived one trip through the Play Comics gauntlet with me on Spawn in the Demon’s Hand, so they know exactly what they signed up for this time: showing up, being extremely knowledgeable, and getting talked into yet another licensed beat-em-up nobody asked for.

So grab a ninja scroll, pick a turtle, any turtle, and let’s find out whether Mutant Nightmare sent Konami’s turtle trilogy out on a high note, or whether the Triceratons should’ve just stayed home.
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In 1986, King Features looked at its stable of unrelated newspaper strip heroes and decided the responsible thing to do was throw them all in a blender. Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, and the Phantom. A spaceman, a stage hypnotist, and a guy who lives in a skull-shaped cave and inherited his job from his dad got drafted into a single Saturday morning cartoon called Defenders of the Earth on the apparent theory that if the Avengers could do a team-up, so could three guys who had never met before that year and shared nothing except a syndicate contract.

Then, because nothing from the ’80s was allowed to stay just a cartoon, Defenders of the Earth became a video game in 1990, courtesy of Enigma Variations, for the exact kind of home computer that made you type a magic incantation and wait: Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga, and, for the three people on Earth who owned one, the SAM Coupé. You play Flash, sneaking through Ming’s castle dodging security cameras, occasionally calling in Mandrake or the Phantom to open doors, because apparently that’s what magic and jungle-honed strength were for in these days.

Helping make sense of this glorious pile of licensed heroes is Ryan Estrada, who’s written comics for Star Trek, Popeye, Garfield, and, fittingly, Flash Gordon itself, having contributed to Papercutz’s newer Flash Gordon Adventures line. Ryan’s also built a reputation for tucking real hidden puzzles and messages directly into his comic pages, in plain sight, daring anyone paying close enough attention to find them. Which feels like exactly the right skillset for an episode about a security system that apparently only a few specific comic strip disciplines can defeat.

So track down a joystick you no longer own, adjust to a universe where Flash Gordon answers to a management structure that includes a professional hypnotist, and let’s find out whether the Defenders of the Earth earned their game, or whether Earth would’ve been just fine handling Ming on its own.
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Garfield has spent I don’t want to think about how long being terrified for our entertainment, and somehow this is only the second time we’ve noticed. Today we’re looking at two occasions Jim Davis’s laziest creation got shoved into a horror plot he absolutely did not sign up for: Garfield’s Nightmare on the Nintendo DS and Garfield’s Scary Scavenger Hunt, the Flash game that lived on Garfield.com back when “Flash game that lived on a dot-com” was still a sentence people said out loud.

Helping us make sense of not one but two instances of “cat, but afraid” is Dee Parson from Supr Dee, the syndicated cartoonist behind Rosebuds. A guy who, by his own account, actually learned to read on Garfield comics, which means this episode is less “guest booking” and more “the student returns to grade the source material’s video game output.”

So lock the pantry, keep an eye on the Scare-O-Meter, and let’s find out if either of these games earned the right to scare a cat who once ate an entire sandwich made of other sandwiches.Continue Reading

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Superman 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 paid good money 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.Continue Reading

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Somewhere out there is a piece of Superman history that almost nobody remembers exists. Not because it was bad. Not because it flopped. It just… vanished off the internet one day, like it got caught in a Phantom Zone projector aimed at a server farm. That’s the story of The Multipath Adventures of Superman, and we’re about to dig it back up.

The whole thing started life as a CD project dreamed up with actual comic book writers, including Louise Simonson and Steve Englehart, before publisher Brilliant Digital Entertainment decided the format worked better as an ongoing online series. So you got Menace of Metallo on disc, and then a sprawling, branching, multi-arc saga that lived entirely on the internet, complete with a villain who time-travels just to make everyone’s life harder. And then, because this is the late ’90s internet we’re talking about, the entire thing quietly vanished. No re-releases, no remasters, just a bunch of dead links and a handful of people insisting this was real and they didn’t dream it.

So yes, this episode is a little bit of a cheat. We usually stick to games you could buy off a shelf and put in a console. This is software, distributed on a CD-ROM and later piecemeal over a dial-up connection, that you had to install a special plugin just to run. But it’s a piece of Superman history that’s basically slipped through the cracks of the internet entirely, and that felt worth breaking the rules for.

Helping me dig through the wreckage is Chris Baker from SuperHero.VG, who has spent decades working on actual superhero games at places like Marvel and LucasArts and literally wrote the book on this stuff with WRONG! Retro Games, You Messed Up Our Comic Book Heroes! If anyone can tell us whether this lost relic deserves to stay lost, it’s him.

So load up the B3D Projector, brace for some early-internet voice acting, and let’s see how many ways Metropolis can end before lunch.Continue Reading

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Look, 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.
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The year was 2006. The Game Boy Advance was winding down, the Justice League animated series had wrapped up, and someone at WayForward Technologies looked at a tiny handheld screen and said, “You know what this needs? The Flash. Running very fast. On a cartridge the size of a business card.” And honestly? Bold decision.

Justice League Heroes: The Flash took the Game Boy Advance, the beloved animated series, and a Justice League comic run and asked the eternal question: how many Rogues can you stuff into a handheld beat-em-up before the whole thing starts wobbling? This episode, we’re finding out. We’re covering the comics, the game, the cartoon connections, and whether Barry Allen or Wally West gets more respect in a world that keeps giving them both the speed force and zero chill.

Joining us to run this whole thing down is Marrilee O’Neil from Fear Coded, who brings exactly the right energy for a conversation about a game that moves fast and expects you to keep up.

So strap in, try not to blink, and let’s do this before the Flash gets impatient and reruns the episode himself.Continue Reading

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At some point in the early 2000s, someone looked at the Dragon Ball Z manga and anime, a story full of screaming men who power up for entire episodes, hair that defies physics, and villains who monologue long enough for the protagonist to reach a new power level, and said, “Yes. This. But make it a fighting game. On two, and only two, consoles.” And thus, Dragon Ball Z Budokai 2 arrived on PS2 and GameCube, ready to let you spend an unreasonable amount of time unlocking characters and pretending you know what a Fusion Dance is supposed to look like in real life.

This episode, we’re going Super Saiyan on the whole thing. The game, the manga, the anime, the drama, the capsules, the questionable story mode decisions. All of it. And joining us to power up the conversation is Russell Moran from Kaiju ComiCast, who brings exactly the kind of kaiju-sized enthusiasm this franchise demands.

So take a deep breath, squeeze out every last drop of ki you’ve got, and let’s get into it. Your hair may or may not turn gold by the end. No promises.Continue Reading

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If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if professional wrestling, superhero nonsense, and a generous helping of “did they really just do that?” collided in a PS2-era video game, congratulations you’ve found your people.

This episode dives headfirst into Galactic Wrestling Featuring Ultimate Muscle, a game that asks the important questions, like how many absurdly named wrestlers can fit into one ring and whether flexing harder is a legitimate combat strategy (it is). Along the way, we’re joined by Josh “Anoriand” Fagundes. Yes, that Anoriand from Twitch. He brings his streaming-honed wisdom and an appreciation for delightful chaos.

Between the manga roots, anime flair, and a game that absolutely commits to the bit, there’s plenty to grapple with here. So lace up your boots, oil up your… everything, and get ready for a match that’s less about winning and more about how spectacularly weird the journey can get.Continue Reading

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Somewhere in the mid-2000s, a group of developers looked at the Justice League and said, “What if we made a game where all your favorite heroes team up… and then we just kinda vibed with that idea instead of sticking to any specific comic storyline?” Which kind of works actually because they got Dwayne McDuffie to write it but that’s not the point. So anyway, Justice League Heroes burst onto the scene for PS2, Xbox, PSP, and Nintendo DS like a Watchtower alarm that nobody remembers installing.

This week on Play Comics, we grab our capes, charge up our vaguely canon-adjacent superpowers, and dive into a game that absolutely has Batman, Superman, and friends… ummm, friends are definitely there I promise and sometimes they have to be there because of contractual obligations. And sometimes even the best version of those friends if you’re lucky and the best version of that hero had been invented already.

Joining the adventure is Gavin Mevius from The Mixed Reviews and The Q Division, bringing along just the right blend of insight, chaos, and “wait, was that ever a comic plot?” energy to help us make sense of it all.

So get ready for teamwork, button mashing, and a Justice League game that is just kind of meh, especially considering the story that it had to work with.Continue Reading

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Buckle up for a PS2 heist where Lupin III swaps manga mischief for blocky stealth antics in Treasure of the Sorcerer King, that 2004 gem channeling Monkey Punch’s rogue into disguises-gone-wrong and treasure hunts that test more patience than finesse.

Joining the vault-cracking crew this time is Robbie Sherman from Conversations with Robbie Sherman, dishing on how the game stacks up to the source chaos of Jigen’s aim, Goemon’s blade ballet, and Fujiko’s inevitable backstab.

So grab your best disguise and let’s see if you can sneak the treasure out of this one. Either way it’s going to be a blast.Continue Reading

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Sometimes a game says it’s based on a comic. Sometimes a movie says it’s based on a comic. And sometimes a game says it’s based on that movie that says it’s based on a comic, and suddenly we’re three layers deep in adaptation lasagna.

This week, we’re cracking open Over the Hedge for the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox—a game that definitely follows the movie’s lead and only politely waves at the original comic strip from across the yard. Expect sneaking, snacking, and more suburban chaos than your average HOA meeting can handle.

Joining the show is Doug Fink (Walloping Web Snappers, Falling with Style, Novel Gaming, and Skreeonk) to help sort out what happens when animals, energy drinks, and licensed games collide in one very busy backyard.

Grab your energy drinks and questionable life choices. I hope you don’t get pinched by the exterminator.Continue Reading

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There are games that make you feel like a superhero, and then there are games that make you feel like you forgot to read the instructions, lost the instructions, and maybe the instructions never existed in the first place. Uncanny X-Men on the NES proudly lives in that second category.

This week, we’re taking a look at a game that technically features some of our favorites from Marvel’s mutants, but in a way that raises a lot of questions. Mostly “why does it work like this?” and “who thought this was a good idea?” Along the way, we’ll try to connect the dots back to the comics and see what actually made the jump from page to cartridge.

Joining the show are frequent guest and actual real-life friend Adam Williamson, along with Miles Stokes from Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, bringing the kind of X-Men knowledge and patience required to make sense of a game that absolutely refuses to explain itself.

So grab a friend, a pile of comfort snacks, and a security blanket because everything you’ve heard about this game is probably true. I hope you survive the experience.Continue Reading

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Some magical girl stories are content with sparkly transformations and heartfelt speeches. This is not one of those stories. This time on Play Comics we’re warping through the glitter-strewn chaos of Sailor Moon: Another Story, the Super Famicom RPG that took the 90s manga and anime vibes, mashed them with branching timelines and turn-based redemption arcs, and asked, “What if destiny needed a save state?” It’s console combat where emotional baggage weighs more than your inventory, and every villain monologue comes with a friendship discount.

Chris isn’t battling cosmic paradoxes solo though. Cass Proffitt from Distant Echoes jumps into the senshi squad to help unpack how this game balances moon crystal lore with JRPG grind, and whether it’s a radiant tribute to Sailor Moon or just the sparkliest timeline meltdown in gaming history. Together they’re digging into what survived the trip from Naoko Takeuchi’s pages to console controllers, complete with overdramatic plot twists and Jupiter’s undefeated punch stat.

Dust off your brooch, queue the theme song, and prepare for senshi squad analysis laced with villain rehab debates and moon prism power-ups that hit different on pixelated screens.Continue Reading

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Springfield’s favorite menace trades his skateboard for spandex in Bartman Meets Radioactive Man, and somehow the result ended up on both the NES and Game Gear. Whether it’s justice or just pure mayhem, this is one crossover nobody asked for but we’re glad to have anyway.

But Chris can’t do this along, so he’s joined by the always enlightening Tommy Proffitt from Distant Echos and Lee Carvallo’s Podding Challenge. Together they unravel what happens when cartoon superheroes meet 8-bit hardware and common sense takes a vacation.

So grab your cape, your slingshot, and your best “Eat my shorts” energy, because things are about to get weird, nostalgic, and slightly irradiated. Just like Bart would’ve wanted.Continue Reading

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They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but in this case, it’s paved with quick‑time events and awkward platforming. Step back into 2010, when grim determination, button mashing, and a suspicious amount of artistic license gave us Dante’s Inferno on the PS3 and Xbox 360, the game adaptation no one asked for but we secretly loved anyway.

Joining Chris this time is Adam Williamson. You know, that guy who’s somehow managed to pop up in both past and future episodes of Play Comics. It’s like he’s got his own metaphysical time loop going, except with fewer torturous souls and more witty banter.

So grab your favorite medieval poetry anthology (or just pretend you’ve read it. No judgment), crank up the over‑the‑top orchestral soundtrack, and prepare to descend through nine circles of beautifully rendered weirdness. Let’s find out how a centuries‑old Italian masterpiece got a glow‑up full of demons, guilt, and surprisingly good level design.Continue Reading

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Look,  We’ve seen a lot of comic-based video games in my time, but when a mafia hitman gets murder powers from an eldritch shadow monster so he can take vengeance on, well, everybody, you know we’ve entered elite storytelling territory. The Darkness isn’t here to make you feel good about humanity. It’s here to make you ask if you’d trade your soul for a pair of talking demon heads who love street lamps way too much.

This week, we’re diving into The Darkness on PS3 and Xbox 360, that moody, gritty, and surprisingly heartfelt adaptation of the classic Top Cow comic series. And joining us for the chaos? None other than Sarah of Mars. Yes, that Mars. Because let’s be real: if you’re dealing with an ancient, malevolent cosmic force, you might as well bring in someone from a planet that already knows about hostile takeovers of a planetary variety.

So get comfy (preferably not in the subway tunnels of New York with a swarm of writhing demons), because we’re unpacking love, loss, corruption, and whatever dark surprises the game decided to throw at us just for kicks. Oh, and if your shadow starts talking back… maybe turn off the console.Continue Reading

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This time on Play Comics, we’re sneaking into the glittery, CGI-filled vault of early-2000s tie-in games and asking the question nobody demanded an answer to: “What if Catwoman, but make it even more 2004?” Between the leather, the eyeliner, and the wall-running, we’re checking out the Catwoman movie game that clawed its way onto GameCube, Xbox, PS2, and Game Boy Advance. It’s the kind of experience that feels like someone motion-captured an energy drink and then gave it a whip.

To help make sense of this pixelated fever dream, Chris is joined by frequent guest Billy from his real life friend group, because if you’re going to suffer through mid-2000s licensed game nonsense, you should at least do it with someone who can confirm you’re not hallucinating. Together they dive into the bizarre elegance of magically convenient scaffolding, combat that thinks “pressing one button a lot” is a personality trait, and a story that remembers it’s based on a movie just often enough to be legally distinct from fun. Expect more cat puns per minute than the ESRB ever intended.

So dust off your flip phone, crank up your nu-metal playlist, and prepare to swing through a world where glass windows are just suggestions and gravity is more of a guideline. Is this game an underrated gem, a misunderstood experiment, or the digital equivalent of stepping on a LEGO in high heels? Tune in to find out how this cinematic catastrophe translated to four different systems, and whether any of them managed to land on their feet.Continue Reading