The Crate and Crowbar

Latest Episodes:

Episode 403: Too-Tight Ouroboros Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

Marsh and Chris bestow their tepid devotions upon Last Call BBS, Cult of the Lamb, and Hard West 2. Plus: the momentary return of questions, emanating – as they ever have – from questions.

Quiverin’ Marsh has been tinkering with Zachtronics’ Last Call BBS.
…which leads us to speculate coquettishly about Alex and his MiSTer. If you’d like to tug upon your own, you can find instructions here.
Chris has collided with a fog barrier in Cult of the Lamb, a game he otherwise esteems!
Marsh has pooled his action points that he might root and toot all over Hard West 2.
We’d play videogame adaptations of Russian Doll and Gentleman Jack.

You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

True Crime: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

Marsh, Tom F and Graham study the evidence for and against true crime dramas and documentaries. Join us in the accusing parlour as we interrogate The Staircase (both documentary and drama), Sophie: A Murder In West Cork, The Unsolved Murder Of Beverly Lynn Smith, The Investigation and The Murders At Starved Rock. We consider the ethics of making and watching stories about real tragedies, discuss whether it’s OK to draw conclusions from true crime media, and solve justice once and for all. Spoilers throughout.

The first season of the podcast Serial feels like the progenitor of a modern wave of true crime.
Making A Murderer popularised true crime on Netflix, though we have issues with it.
Errol Morris’s 1988 film The Thin Blue Line is a true crime documentary that served to exonerate an innocent man.
The Staircase is a French-produced documentary, originally released in 2004 and updated with new episodes in 2013 and 2018, about the trial of Michael Peterson for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson. It’s now available to stream on Netflix US and UK.
The Staircase is also the name of a 2022 HBO miniseries about the same events, starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette. It’s streaming on HBO Max and Sky Atlantic.
Sophie: A Murder In West Cork is a 2021 Netflix documentary about the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
The Unsolved Murder Of Beverly Lynn Smith is an Amazon Prime documentary about a 1974 murder and the Mr. Big police sting used 40 years later as part of a cold case investigation.
The Investigation is a 2020 Danish drama about the murder of Kim Wall, currently streaming on HBO Max.
The Murders At Starved Rock is an HBO documentary about the 1961 murder of three women, the conviction of Chester Weger, and the unanswered questions which remain.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 402: Can a Game Give You Toxoplasmosis? Jul 29, 2022

Show notes

In this Accidental Annapurna Special, Alex and Chris discuss the joy of driving big boats in FAR: Changing Tides, and the wanton nature of animal games, as reflected by the latest big animal game, Stray. You know, the cat game!

Also! News on Pip’s new game she’s doing called Flock, and Alex tells the unhappy tale of how his dog came to steal his pitta bread.

Alex might be going gently mad without his family, but at least he has his dog-friend Roddy.
Pip’s done a new game! It’s called Flock and it’s being developed by Hollow Ponds and published by Annapurna Interactive. Hey, watch the trailer, even if it has no Pip-words.
And while you’re at it, why not check all the Hollow Ponds games, which are all very different but share Big Charm.
Alex has been playing Okomotive’s latest take on the “go from left to right” genre, FAR: Changing Tides. Drive an big boat! Hoist an sail! Fire an engine!
Both Chris and Alex have been playing the cat game, Stray. But is it really a cat game?
We can all celebrate the spectacular nature of Kowloon Walled City.
Untitled Goose Game remains both untitled and the pinnacle of animal games.
But Outer Wilds remains the pinnacle of high-ambition, high-concept indie games.
Could it be true? That we’re sitting at the end of a decade of animal games? Nearly! Goat Simulator was first released in April 2014.
Ghost of Tsushima is a pretty and smoooooth game that is ripe for grazing.
Weird how a cat brings focus to the emerging nature of games on subscription programmes like PlayStation Plus Mega But Not Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass!!!
Because in contrast with Stray, Injustice 2 probs isn’t an ideal subscription game, unless you covet Batman gloves???
Come and burn a beef rendang in sympathy with Alex. It’s delicious, when not burned!

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 401: Urgent Things To Motorbikes Jul 15, 2022

Show notes

Join Jamie Brittain and Alex Wiltshire on the muggy spectrum, where we discuss the shrinking spaces of Elden Ring, the very Xbox 360 thrills of Geometry Wars and Halo 3, and briefly touch on the ludicrous joys of Dmc.

Also! We find out what the guy over Jamie’s back gate is up to, discover how many times Alex’s daughter has completed Breath Of The Wild, and learn why 2007 was a terrible year for Jamie’s mental health, but an excellent year for Grolsch, Lambert & Butler and overlooked sports games.

Hail satan! American video game retail titan Gamestop is getting into NFTs just in time.
Take a leaf from Michael Owen’s book, and simply make NFTS that won’t lose value.
Elden Ring, remains very good indeed, even if you forsake the Outer Git Gud and summon spuriously through the back half. The Comet Azure build is very silly, and very fun.
Is Elden Ring better than Breath Of The Wild? Quite possibly!
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a gorgeous mediation on horse testicle shrinkage, and possibly other stuff too.
Jamie calls Destiny 2 Density 2 in his head, every single time, and now you have to as well.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is excellent.
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 is also excellent, even if the 2 should be before the colon, not after.
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions has the number in the right place but is otherwise considered a bit of a mess by fans, though it’s probably still dead good.
Backgammon has a doubling cube which is basically the precursor to the smartbomb in Retro Evolved in so many entirely cogent ways.
Halo 3 has them good singing monks and a sense of narrative brevity.
Crestfallen Warrior simulator Skyrim.
Rockstar Table Tennis ruined my life, but my god, it was so worth it! (Aside: it was not worth it.)
Devil May Cry: Dmc is really excellent, the right kind of bad taste.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Tabletop Roleplaying Games: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar Jul 08, 2022

Show notes

Storied dungeon master Jim Rossignol joins Marsh to talk about the joy of pretending to be scoundrels, goblins and doomed spacemen, and why you should venture beyond the vast borders of Dungeons & Dragons to do so. Discussed: Blades in the Dark, Agon, Mothership, Symbaroum, Numenera, DIE & more!

Mohican Dwarf: an early role-model.
Dungeons and Dragons: the big kahuna! Now in its 5th Edition, sometimes referred to simply as 5E.
Palladium Books’ Rifts RPG
Traveller
Vampire: The Masquerade
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
The Genesys System
There’s a Star Wars game using Genesys
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy has its original D100 system and a Genesys makeover
Mothership
Call of Cthulhu
Modiphius D6 is the system that underpins Tales from the Loop, Forbidden Lands, Coreolis and others
Numenera
Blades in the Dark – the best RPG system ever? Perhaps! Games based on this are referred to as Forged in the Dark
Blades itself is based on Powered by the Apocalypse
Our own RPG setting and system: Teeth! We’ve released three modules so far: Night of the Hogmen, Blood Cotillion and Stranger & Stranger
The Teeth newsletter will keep you updated on our progress towards the full-setting kickstarter and also make you more attractive and powerful as a human being.
Scum and Villainy
Band of Blades
CBRPNK
Agon
Symbaroum
Kieron Gillen’s DIE
Jim’s Twitter

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 400: Tina Turner’s Tuna Turtles Jul 01, 2022

Show notes

Pip, Tom F, Chris and Marsh gather to discuss the oldest recipe, what windows are and whether objects are real. Also! Videogames: The Wild at Heart, Citizen Sleeper, Norco and Hellsinger. Also also: the return of Questions from Questions and, thrice-also, a quiz.

Zachtronics is shutting down with one more game: Last Call BBS
The Wild at Heart is a cute Pikminvania game
Nine minutes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge leads to more minutes of nonsense than I, or probably you, anticipated
Citizen Sleeper is a hot new narrative game set aboard a space-station where you play a sad synthetic being
Norco is also a hot new narrative game and also about being sad, but this time in a near-future Louisiana
Metal: Hellsinger is a rhythm-action FPS where you play a demon lady.
I should write show-notes for all the questions but I won’t. I just won’t.
We had more excellent questions than we had time to answer – maybe we’ll get to them next game-pod!
Pip is working on Little Kitty, Big City, a lovely game about an easily distracted cat.
Tom is working on Tactical Breach Wizards, a turnbased game about defenestration – but not enfenestration.
Marsh is working on Teeth, a series of tabletop RPGs set in a cursed 18th-century England, three of which are available with a Kickstarter to come.
Chris is working on Hytale, a massive sandbox RPG, and writing stories about Warhammer gribblies for the Black Library.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Mad God: A Lock-in at the Crate and Crowbar Jun 24, 2022

Show notes

Jamie and Marsh climb into their effluent splattered diving-bell and plunge into the bowels, literal and metaphorical, of Mad God, the wildly deranged, deeply harrowing stop-motion masterpiece from animation legend Phil Tippett. Bon appetit!

Mad God has been released on Shudder, a horror streaming service.
Fellow Hell-depicters of yore: Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Breughel
This is definitely not the Dark Crystal.
A few of the stop-motion references we carry with us:
Harry Hausen films, e.g. Clash of the Titans
Aardman Animations’ work, including their brilliant Wallace & Gromit films
Cosgrove Hall’s Wind in the Willows
I made tea and coffee on the set where the model shots for Blackadder: Back & Forth were composed/animated
The Fast Show’s animation sketch
The Shivering Truth – a body horror take on stop-frame
Pingu’s The Thing, aka Thingu
Phil Tippett’s credits include Star Wars (including the AT-AT battle on Hoth, Robocop, Tremors 2, Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers and the astonishingly silly-sounding Virus.
Potential influences or comparative works:
The films of Andrei Tarkovsky
Horrendous mud-slathered pseudo-medieval madness: Hard to be a God
Powerfully grim war film: Come and See
Bill Plimpton’s films
Beautiful documentary about catharsis and obsession: Marwencol
Jan Švankmajer’s films, Little Otik and Alice
Other references we make:
Michael Haneke’s Funny Games
Dante’s Inferno (not the videogame)
Low’s album, Double Negative
Matthew Barney’s epic Cremaster cycle is “a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films”. Well!
Other things on Shudder you can watch with a temporary sub: White Girl, The Babadook, A Field in England, Ginger Snaps, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, REC, ABCs of Death, VHS 94, Possum and… Heathers???

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 399: No Gribblies in the Slick Future Jun 17, 2022

Show notes

Jamie and Marsh discuss the highlights, or rather the extensive mid-range tones, of the E3 week that wasn’t, delight in Next Fest’s demos for Old Skies and Agent 64: Spies Never Die, and usher in the doom of humankind in Shadows of Forbidden Gods.

Geoff Keighley’s twitching automaton presents Summer GameFest aka Keigh-3. Enjoy it to the exact degree that Keighley permits, and no more.
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Tide is a promising firstperson cultist-squisher from the Vermintide devs.
Jamie’s also been enjoying the turnbased tactics game in the same universe: Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is the first CRPG in the 40K setting.
The Callisto Protocol is an incredibly violent sci-fi horror game which is probably unplayably scary for us, but has great mince animation.
Aliens: Dark Descent is a turnbased tactics game.
Routine is another space horror game – 10 years in development so far!
Fort Solis: another spooky space game.
Shoot guns transgressively in the future from the past in the future again in The Last of Us remake and its multiplayer spin-off.
Flashback 2 is a sequel to the rotoscoped platformer classic.
American Arcadia is a cinematic platformer in a Jetsons-y fake future.
A Plague Tale: Requiem
Overwatch 2. In the immortal words of that character who you love: “Boom, baby.”
Vin Diesel is in Ark 2, or at least his non-verbal vocalisations are.
Excellent hammers in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn.
Minecraft: Legends is an RTS from the very cool folks at Blackbird Interactive.
Gimme the blood sausage, Diablo 4!
BALL BUG BALL BUG BALL BUG BALL BUG BALL BUG BALL BUG
Fine, apparently it’s called Cocoon.
Mine ore to pay off your mortgage in Starfield.
Pentiment is a Name of the Rose-style murder mystery that looks like an illuminated manuscript.
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is a cool coffee table book that does what it says on the tin.
Old Skies is a cracking point-n-click from Wadjet Eye.
Agent 64: Spies Never Die is retro throwback FPS in the mould of GoldenEye.
Kyle Kushtel’s piece on game design conservatism, nostalgia and remakes.
Metal: Hellsinger is a fun rhythm-action retro shooter that goes for a death metal album cover style that may have gone off the boil.
Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer is an ironic retro shooter made by a fictional very-online edge-lord developer from Hypnospace Outlaw.
Anger Foot is a slick and maybe shallow FPS speed-run where you put the boot into animal-headed thugs.
The Silent Swan is a otherwordly open-world walking-simulator with a paucity of settings options.
Shadows of Forbidden Gods is a strategy game played from the perspective of a Lovecraftian mega-horror.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Everything Everywhere All at Once: A Lock-In at the Crate and Crowbar Jun 10, 2022

Show notes

Jamie, Chris and Marsh dive into the kaleidoscopic weirdness of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Join us as we discuss it in the context of such cultural touchstones as Christopher Nolan’s Fart Clock, musical instruments designed to make children faint, and Crysis 2.

Lots of spoilers, almost from the outset, and even in the cast list below! You should see the film first.
Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
The cast!
Michelle Yeoh – Evelyn
Ke Huy Quan – Waymond
Stephanie Hsu – Joy / Jobu Tupaki
James Hong – Gong Gong
Jamie Lee Curtis – Deirdre Beaubeirdre
Tallie Medel – Becky Sregor
Brian Le – An Incredibly Good Sport
Randy Newman – Raccacoonie
Stuff we reference:
The Matrix Resurrections
In the Mood for Love
Christopher Nolan’s films: Tenet, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar
Ratatouille
Rick and Morty
Into the Spiderverse
Mad Max: Fury Road
Grant Morrison’s The Filth
Top Gun: Maverick
Chris’s mother, a fine lady who love planes

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

Episode 398: A Serpentine Poo in the Theatre of the Mind Jun 03, 2022

Show notes

Chris and Marsh mull over videogame fictions on TV, reject the inhumanity of space capitalism in Citizen Sleeper, embrace the inhumanity of space capitalism in Dune: Spice Wars, bounce off Dracula’s digs in V Rising, and get their Sokob-on in Jelly Is Sticky.

Sony says its creating TV series based on Horizon, God of War and Gran Turismo.
Sorry that I come across as a bit of a Sammy in this section. I don’t think these will definitely be bad, I just feel we need more telly that is made primarily because it promises to be good telly in its own right rather than because it will bring in an audience from elsewhere.
“But it’s just another war!”
Master Chief’s canon misfires in the weird Halo TV series
Citizen Sleeper is a superb narrative RPG about a sad robot, trying to make a life on a shattered space station as their body fails and bounty hunters close in.
Dune: Spice Wars is a good realtime grand strategy game that necessarily but perhaps disappointingly offers a more consistent and predictable level playing field than the fiction presents.
V Rising is like an isometric bloodsucking Valheim. But perhaps it needs a Renfield to do the monkeywork?
Jelly Is Sticky is an excellent Sokoban puzzle game about different kinds of jelly and its various levels of stickiness.

The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.

Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.

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