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Most podcast guests call in from a spare bedroom, a closet lined with winter coats, or a parked car outside a grocery store. Josh Garvey is joining us from the middle of a black hole. On the bright side, the room tone is fantastic. Nothing echoes when nothing, light included, is allowed to leave.

It’s also a fitting backdrop, because this episode is all about taking an adventure you used to play and asking it to sit still on a page. Somebody looked at a whole quest built on mashing buttons and said, “What if the only button left was ‘turn the page’?” The bravest thing you can do is lick your thumb. That’s a bold leap from the action genre to the paper-cut genre, and we’re going to take a hard look at The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in comic form.

Josh has agreed to walk us through it from beyond the event horizon, where time runs a bit slow, so by the time you hear this he’s technically still on his first sentence. That also makes him the only guest we’ve ever had who can offer a genuine link to the past, a pun I’ve been sitting on since the moment he said yes. We had to be careful with the mic placement, since anything left within Josh’s reach gets stretched into a very long strand of spaghetti. Lesson learned about the pop filter.

So please keep your arms, legs, and any nearby light inside the episode at all times, and don’t panic if the audio shows up a few billion years late. Nobody has ever returned from a black hole to leave a bad review, which honestly might be the best business model in podcasting.Continue Reading

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Welcome back, intrepid trainers and portable pixel pioneers! This week on Play Comics, we’re diving headfirst into the magical world where handheld gaming meets manga madness with Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen for the Game Boy Advance – those delightful remakes that proved sometimes going back to where it all began is exactly what the Pokédex ordered. Released in 2004, these Kanto classics didn’t just give us shiny new graphics and wireless trading capabilities; they spawned an entire manga adaptation that turned Red, Blue, and Green’s adventures into something far more dramatic than “gotta catch ’em all” – think more along the lines of “gotta survive mysterious vortexes and Team Rocket’s Three Beasts while somehow not getting turned to stone”.

Speaking of adventures, we’re absolutely thrilled to have Connor joining us for this episode – yes, the same Connor from my local comic shop who has somehow managed to convince me that I need every single variant cover, limited edition, and “exclusive” release that walks through his door. Connor’s wallet-draining superpowers are matched only by his encyclopedic knowledge of both gaming and comics, making him the perfect guide for our journey through the FireRed & LeafGreen saga that spans both pixels and panels.

So grab your Game Boy Advance, dust off those manga volumes, and prepare for an episode that’s more engaging than trying to catch a shiny Pokémon while Connor whispers sweet nothings about the latest Batman #1 variant in your ear. We’ll explore how faithful the manga stayed to the gaming experience, whether adding interdimensional drama actually improved the “become the very best” formula, and why sometimes the best way to revisit a classic is to completely reimagine what “classic” means in the first place.Continue Reading