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.
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.
