Nintendo Lawyers, Home Gardening & Comic-Con At Home featuring Shaun from Comics2Movies

This week we invite our special guest Shaun Keenan, creator of Xtreme Champion Tournament (in which mythical and legendary heroes face off) to share his thoughts on some news from San Diego Comic Con.

Kicking things off, the Nerds discuss Nintendo's itchy DMCA trigger finger, they’ve taken down the tragically short-lived DirectX 12 Super Mario 64 Port. This was a fan work based on the Mario 64 decompilation project, reformed into a gorgeous 4k Ultra-Widescreen rendition of everyone's favourite plumber. And they also lost 2TB of data including user account details, which are now being used to hack people. Oops.

There's now one less reason to leave the house, since gardening provides a boost to your emotional well-being that is as powerful as going out for dinner or taking a run. Grow chickens and you have an excuse for a dinner and a run as well. So, is gardening the ultimate weapon against millennial depression memes?

Lastly, Shaun chips in to talk about SDCC's move to being an online only event. Pros: Better food. Better chairs. No lines. Cons: No costumes. No crowd excitement. It's a tough sell for some of us, but the rest of us are perfectly happy to stay at home.

This week, Professor broke his brain in HyperRogue and DJ confronted his fear of the dark in Alan Wake.

Come back next week, we miss you.

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Virtual meetings, Wonder Woman, WarriOrb & Autism Studies

Welcome, to the World of TOMOROOOW!

What does listening to a podcast have to do with listening to your boss? Science is now showing benefits to virtual meetings. Which means one day, even your boss might be replaced by a voice over the wire. This still doesn't mean you can get out of wearing pants.

Wonder Woman's director thinks DC shouldn't follow the tried and true MCU formula. Sure, it worked for them, but can it be pulled off twice? Let us know if you have a good argument for there being room for two comic cinematic universes.

WarriOrb is a new game that's just been released on Steam. But following a highly popular demo, WarriOrb's initial sales have been disappointingly low. The devs have posted their own analysis on Reddit, and they're understandably confused.

Wrapping up, we have a discussion about scientific studies involving Autistic people.

We played Crysis and Legends of Runeterra this week. Professor's computer didn't melt playing Crysis, and DJ isn't any better at counting cards.

Wait around to hear from us next week with another great episode.

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High Stakes, Hollywood & Forbidden Library

It's that time of week again, so check out our newest episode.

To start this week, we have a bit of levity. NASA have programmed one of their robots to hit itself with a shovel. It's all for a good cause, they want to get their InSight lander's mole digging again. The probe became stuck and using the shovel as a hammer is just the latest attempt to get it going again.

DJ wants to tell us about Hollywood's response to COVID-19, including delays to the filming of Amazon's Lord of the Rings series. Now New Zealand has closed their borders and the Hobbits will not be going to Isengard.

Next, it's time to enter THE FORBIDDEN LIBRARY. It isn't just in Harry Potter anymore; a group have created a library dedicated to copying articles from countries without press freedom. Did we mention it's in Minecraft? Next time you get busted playing Minecraft when you should be doing homework, just say you're researching.

On this week's games section, Professor makes a declaration that will surely lead to war. Having experienced Final Fantasy 7 and Black Mesa, he declares Black Mesa the better remake. If anyone has an issue with this, we'll have to substitute fisticuffs with videogames.

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Valve Index, Masters of the Universe & Crew Dragon

The Nerds are back, proving that 107 episodes just isn't too much for the human body to handle.

This week, the Professor has a complaint about that saintly game developer, Valve. What's his problem with Gabe and the multi award winning game studio? They're sold out of VR headsets with only a month to go before the release of Half Life: Alyx.

The Masters of the Universe are coming back as well. The Professor has another complaint, this time about the casting of Skeletor. He thinks it's ridiculous to bring back Skeletor's original voice in a different role and cast a new actor for Skeletor. Even if that actor is the esteemed Mark Hamill. DJ thinks this sacrilege is 100% ok. The star studded cast list has the Nerds highly excited for this revival.

Now that Dragon has been human rated, SpaceX have moved the capsule to the launch pad, and the crew are a pair of former Shuttle pilots. This will be the first manned space mission from the US since the Shuttle program was shut down. America Can Into Space? Soon, hopefully.

Professor and DJ have some trouble pronouncing American Indian and Finnish words in the Remembrances and Shoutouts, and laugh at the Boomers who couldn't believe Bill and Ted actually speak like that.

Stay hydrated and come hang out with us again next week.

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Two Years On - We Are Still Here - Greening, Dune & E.A.

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, yep it is our 2nd birthday episode. We wish to say thank you to everyone who listens to us. We really appreciate all the support and encouragement we have received. It has been an amazing experience that we have all enjoyed on the Nerds team. Well, here is to another year of Nerdity and fun, we hope you enjoy everything as we continue to look for those items we enjoy learning about and discussing.

            First up this week Buck brings us news that Global Warming is being slowed by a phenomenon known as Global Greening. Apparently all the carbon emissions have provided a positive impact for the trees and plants. Now, this is only a small impact and not enough to celebrate with street parties, but still it is some good news. So with this news coming to light and in the wake of the recent bushfires in Australia it might be a good idea to plant some trees or bushes to help the environment. If nothing else it will give the computers and consoles a break for an hour or two.

            Next up DJ has the first reactions to the new Dune movie, and it is looking promising. Of course Professor and Buck being the fans they are have some reservations, but are excited to see the latest offering when it is released. There is the usual discussion about who might be the best option for director, what were the failures in the previous movies; and what were the successes from them as well. But hopefully one day an offering will be presented that is worthy of Frank Herbert’s legendary work. DJ continues with a discussion on the impact of the Coronavirus on the Chinese film industry. There have been major disruptions in the Chinese economy and a large section of the industry is on hold while China tries to combat this epidemic. We discuss the broad effects of this, but we wish everyone well and hope that this is contained and treated soon.

            Professor has a list of 14 new games that are planned to be released this next fiscal year by EA. We have a look at the offerings and discuss what we think is the most exciting or interesting of these releases. Now it might interest you to know that what we found as the most interesting games to look forward to. We will tell you, to find out listen in and learn what are the games being released that Professor is most interested to see. Also what game Buck thinks should move across to the EA studio catalogue; and what he thinks is an approach to the new Battlefield game if the crew behind Star Citizen were involved.

            As usual we have the Shout outs, Remembrances, Birthdays, and Events of Interest for the week. We invite you to check out MySongsSuck, with our man Alex Smith. Also there is there offering of The Story Chunder, which is sure to delight some and perchance disgust others. As always remember to take care of yourselves, look out for each other, and stay hydrated.

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