This week, all your BASE are belong to Retro Ridoctopus!
We are celebrating the crown jewel of any action figure toy line! Whether you called it a base, playset, headquarters, or battle station... we all drooled over those commercials. Begging our parents to pony up even more cash so we could bring a little piece of our action figures' world home!
He-Man had Castle Grayskull and the Thundercats had Cat's Lair... but that's barely scratching the surface. In this episode, your Octo-hosts rattle off a veritable city's worth of play sets across all different toy lines from the 80s and 90s. So go pick out your favorite "guys" and familiarize yourselves with the locations of all available foot pegs because it's time to play!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
Legendary comedic actor John Candy left us on March 4th, 1994 at the age of 43, much to the dismay of his millions of fans. To help celebrate his life and career, we have a returning guest-host and John Candy super-fan, Retroid and co-host of the Spooky Picture Show, Raina Madison !
We each picked 2 of our favorite Candy films to spotlight, but knowing us, it's a safe bet we'll mention way more than that. Though John was probably far too humble to have ever believed it, his enormous absence is still felt these 30 years later. Fortunately, he left us a library of fun to remember him by!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
Love him or hate him, the career of John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne was one for the ages. With the help of our pals Synopsis Grim and Portland Maine's own, DJ Rick Johnson, we'll hop on a crazy train and journey across five decades—spotlighting five albums from the solo career of heavy metal's one and only Prince of Darkness.
Along the way, we'll share plenty about each track and what listening to these albums has meant to us over the years. Obviously, we are all huge metal heads and Ozzy was a major influence in shaping the music that shaped each one of us.
And since you're here... check out Rick Johnson's blog: HEAVY METAL NOMAD!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
This week, down in the slimy, ever-squirming blackness of the BRIG, we have the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of such acclaimed horror as Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Kill Your Darling, Stay on the Line, What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters and much much more… he’s two parts Vonnegut, one part Ellison… and like nine more parts tornado made of crazed weasels... it's Clay McLeod Chapman!
Snag your copy of ACQUIRED TASTE at your local bookseller or from one of our favorites!
And keep up with all things CLAY on his official website!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
For another "Couch Bro-Op", Parasite Steve and 8-Bit Alchemy play through one of the most criminally under appreciated titles on the NES. The Guardian Legend was released in 1988, and to this day, there's still nothing like it!
This hybrid action-adventure/shoot 'em up game was developed by Compile—a company who has quite the pedigree when it comes to vertical shooting games. You take control of a nameless female cyborg, with the ability to shift between humanoid and spaceship forms. Because—like the Megamaid...she's a TRANSFORMER.
As a humanoid, you'll traverse a vast sci-fi labyrinth, collecting power-ups, new sub-weapons and keys that unlock vertical shoot-em up levels (twenty-one in all)! The controls are tight, the exploration is fulfilling and the bosses are pure nightmare fuel!
If you haven't played this absolute gem of a game, change that as soon as possible. The Guardian Legend is a must have for fans of both classic Zelda and vertical SHMUPS!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
We welcome back Randy Carter (from Swarm of Comics) for a soaring discussion on the Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics!
The Golden Age of comic books in the United States spanned 1938 to 1956, beginning with the 1938 debut of Superman in Action Comics #1. And the Silver Age is generally considered to span 1956 to 1970. That period began with the publication of DC Comics' Showcase #4 (October 1956), which introduced the modern version of the Flash, Barry Allen.
For this episode, your Octo-hosts will each pick 1 superhero from the Golden Age and 1 from the Silver Age! As usual, you can expect plenty of deep cuts and rambling as we navigate this enormously important period of time. Nuff said?
Follow Randy Carter's Swarm of Comics, on his ongoing CGC unboxing adventures!
And if thrashy death metal is your thing... you gotta put Swarm of Eyes in your ear holes!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
For this episode of THE BRIG, we are joined by the writing team of Jesse Scoble and Devinder Thiara who rode in from the Great White North to promote their new weird western comic, DEAD MONEY!
Jesse is an award-winning game writer with credits on: Assassin’s Creed Origins & Odyssey, Far Cry 5, Watch Dogs 2, HyperScape, and Wizard101. TTRPG work includes A Game of Thrones d20, the Marvel Multiverse RPG, and Vampire.
Devinder is a tabletop RPG writer with credits on Dune, Conan, John Carter of Mars, and the new Marvel Multiverse RPG. A published short story author, he is a history buff, and a longtime fan of SF/fantasy.
Support Dead Money on Kickstarter and get in on this killer project before it explodes!
And sign up for the Dead Money newsletter!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
For this episode, we get in touch with our softer sides...
Get ready to hear a handful of super rad GIRL TOYS that go way beyond playing with dolls. Properties like the Care Bears, My Little Pony and Rainbow Brite have been slapped on as many things as He-Man or the Transformers over the years, and have had just as many reboots. And while we may mention the cartoons, our focus here is on the TOYS!
Parasite Steve is on assignment (wrestling crabs in the Outer Banks) but stepping in as guest host is the amazing and velvet-voiced Taryn Barber! A very long time friend of the show, Taryn is the President of Amalga-Mania and the mastermind behind all the incredible artisan soaps over at ACID KITTY! We are so happy to have her back!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
RELOAD!! RELOAD!! PER-KANNG!!
Whether you're aiming your NES Zapper at some 8-bit ducks or feeding quarters into an arcade to head-shot some video zombies, you're experiencing the white-knuckled action of a niche sub-genre of video games known as a LIGHT GUN GAMES or ON RAILS SHOOTERS!!
Tonight, with the help of our old buddy, Nintenjoe, we'll spotlight some personal favorites! We start with beloved titles like Duck Hunt, House of the Dead and Time Crisis and, as we are want to do, move to a bunch of obscure hidden gems that went under the radar!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile
With the help of our pal Scott Clevenger (from The Slumgullion podcast) we dish all about four stylish 90's action/adventure films that were looking to the pulps of the 30s for inspiration! These movies featured heroic characters from a bygone era of pulp magazines, comic strips and serials!
We'll each present one of the four films while diving into their pulpy origins. By the time these films were made, these characters weren't as well known as in their heyday, but there would never have been a Batman without The Shadow, The Phantom or Dick Tracy!
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Retro Ridoctopus is:
• Parasite Steve (read)
• 8-Bit Alchemy (listen)
• Coopster Gold (join)
• Nintenjoe (subscribe)
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All original heavy metal music by Enchanted Exile