On this episode the Beats crew takes a look at a topic we've mentioned in passing several times before but are finally giving it the attention it deserves - the world of gaming trophies and achievements! We talk about the origins of gaming achievements (which might surprise you!) as well as discussing what makes a good trophy (or a bad one) and some of our favorites to collect. We also take a look at our overall trophy stats and the rarest trophies we've got. At the end of all of our banter we cap things off with some trophy trivia.

Are you someone that strives for 100% achievement completion? Do you live to hear that platinum notification? Then this is the episode for you! Don't really care about all that? Well, I think you'll still have a good time. And after all, if you want to get the achievement for listening to all of the BOTM episodes you don't really have a choice. So grab your Brasso and get ready to shine up those awards in this deep dive on gaming achievements and trophies!

It's the middle of summer and what better way to celebrate than with a bunch of games that give you those sweet summer vibes? We kick things off with the official system of the summer - the Switch 2! We talk about our experiences so far with the new console and Mario Kart World before getting into some other summer vibe games like Yakuza Infinite Wealth and Reel Fishing: Days of Summer. After that we kick things over to a deep dive with our look at the RBI Baseball series. That's right - 2 episodes for the price of one (although last time I checked the price of admission is zero dollars, so I guess the price doesn't really matter here...). And with this double header of an episode we've got a double dose of trivia - it's a jam packed episode! So grab your mitt, your sunscreen, and your headphones and join us for our look at Summer Vibe games and RBI Baseball!

Hello! Due to some scheduling conflicts we are going to combine Muff's deep dive of RBI baseball into our next episode for Summer Vibe Games. For this episode, we are going to instead look deep into the Beat of the Month archives and find clips from old shows that have never been heard before. Some may be gaming related and some may be completely random. Some may have our "passable" audio quality you've grown to expect, and some clips may sound like garbage.

If this is your first time joining us, I'd recommend not listening to this at all and go to an earlier episode. We kind if meander through random topics as many of these clips were taken prior to the episodes actually starting or after they had ended. But if you're feeling adventurous for a trip into the unknown then feel free to join us as we take a look into some forgotten Beat of the Month clips!

Have you ever been so excited for a game to come out that you just couldn't stop talking about it? Have you ever played a game so good that you needed to tell everyone how great it was? Well, for Beat of the Month crew member Melbro, this happens a couple times a week. And this episode is to celebrate these games - Hype Train Games! And boy oh boy are there a lot of games to cover across all sorts of different genres.

Let's see...we've got Sifu, Death's Door, Elden Ring, Split Fiction, Street Fighter 6, Inscryption, Spider Man, Blue Prince, Little Nightmares, Neon White, Balatro, Black Myth Wukong, and about a dozen more games. There's something for everyone! However, not everyone agrees with Melbro's enthusiasm for these games, so it leads to some lively conversation. So grab your ticket for this speeding locomotive and join us - for Hype Train Games!

The Nintendo Switch 2 is fast approaching, so we decided to take one last look at the original Nintendo Switch - the greatest video game of all time! OK maybe I'm going a bit overboard with that last statement, but the Switch has been wildly successful and it's life cycle coming to an end is a big event.

First, we take a trip back to the launch and share our thoughts on the early lineup of games and our launch day experiences. Then we take a look at the games, the peripherals, the online service/store, and have some trivia along the way. We cap it off with games we still have in our backlog for Switch 1 while talking about our plans to pickup or pass Switch 2.

So grab your joy-cons...no not that one - it's got drift. No not that one either. You know what, how about you grab the pro controller instead and join us...as we say goodbye to Nintendo Switch!

For those of you who just didn't get enough celebrating over Mother's Day Weekend, we've got something in store for you - an episode all about Mom Games! 150 episodes after our debut episode dealing with Dad Games, we finally come back around to celebrate with the moms. Yeah we missed the timing a bit for Mother's Day, but better late than never.

We start off the episode talking about games we played with our moms or games that our moms like to play. Then we take a break to do a catchup with our video game Fantasy league, followed by a look at all the games with a mom theme we played this month such as Yakuza Infinite Wealth and Detroit: Become Human. We also talk a bit about some games off theme like the excellent Blue Prince. It's a pretty packed episode once again!

If you didn't wish your mom a happy mother's day then you better do it right now. And when you're done, come back and join us, for this episode on Mom Games! And if you want to follow along with our video game fantasy league, come visit at fantasycritic.games and search for our league, The Beats. Enjoy the show!

For our big 150th episode celebration we have...a regular episode. Our 5 year anniversary is coming up so maybe we'll do something special for that. But for this one - we're taking a deep dive into indie darling Outer Wilds!

If you've seen this game mentioned online it usually comes with a word of caution to go in as blind as possible - and we'd agree! For the most part. We start off the conversation with our experience getting into the game, what we wish we had known before we started, and how we would describe it in as spoiler free terms as possible. After that, we shift gears into heavy spoilers talking about most key areas of the game, places where we got stuck, our interpretation of the story, and then blowing the doors off with details about the very end of the journey.

If you're remotely interested in playing this game I would certainly recommend hitting pause once we give the spoiler warning and give it a go! And if you're an Outer Wilds veteran, then I hope you enjoy our stories of fumbling around through space while scratching our heads. So with that, grab you space suit and get ready to explore the unknown, with our deep dive on Outer Wilds!

What is an Open World Game? Is it the ability to play any level in any order? Is it a multitude of missions that you can pick and choose as you wish? Is it based on camera and perspective? The Beat of the Month crew handle this philosophical debate as we cover the Open World Games that we played in the month of August.

We cover some of the biggest Open World Games around such as The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. We've also got some lesser known games like The Pathless and some smaller Open World Games like Bowser's Fury. As usual, with a crew of 8 we've got something for everyone and a lot of different opinions. So please - join us for the games and stay for the Funyuns!