Half-Life projects, Comic-Con program guide, Playstation Factory & Esports Mental Toughness

First, Dev-i-boy found a list of Valve games that never came out. These games were created in the dark times before Half Life: Alyx was announced, and include some interesting looks at what Half Life 3 could have been.

You can't go to Comic-Con this year, but you can watch it online. There's a great program with tons of shows including comics, television and gaming news. It's also probably the most accessible Comic-Con ever, since you don't need to leave your house and the shows are free.

First the robots came for the car factory jobs, and I said nothing. Then they came for the Playstation 4 assembly jobs, and I said "Cool, that's some nice tech". Sony has almost fully automated their assembly line and only use four people on the ends of a single assembly line that makes one console every 30 seconds. It's awesome.

Esports are stressful, and high skill players show the same signs of stress as their analogue counterparts. This doesn't surprise the Nerds at all, but it's an interesting study.

This week, Professor played a chaotic real time dice rolling game, DJ kept the peace in Agents of Mayhem and Dev-i-boy got distracted by job applications. Wish him luck.

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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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Archives, Electronics & Vikings

Welcome back to another awesome episode of Nerd pop culture delivered in a friendly manner by those loose gooses, the Nerds. This week we would like to say that since China hasn’t offered us any money to sell our self-respect or virtue that we support the protestors in Hong Kong. Viva la revolution! Now if we do not have an episode in the near future you know that they took us out like Hillary Clinton helps her opposition to have fatal accidents… Just going to leave this here and see who comes after us first.

Now onto the episode, first up is the Professor with a look at the Australian Video Game Archive. What is this you ask, well it is an amazingly cool idea and we hope it gets sorted out soon. Now if you love playing awesome games, love Australia, and are just a tragic nerd like our boys then you will love this. To know exactly what it is you are going to have to listen in and find out. But let us know on Facebook what game you think should go into the archive.

Next up we have finally achieved printed electronics that you can wear. That’s right, wear. Are you tired of not being able to hold your torch and need an extra hand, but don’t want to wear one of those straps around your head with a light on it? We have the solution for you, tattoo light systems. Want to stand out in the crowd and really be noticed? We can help you shine a light on your darkest corners. Sounds interesting right? Well listen up as this is our second featured topic for the week.

Do you wish that reality television had more things like axe throwing in it? Are you tired of shows like survivor where there is no chance of them dying? Well we have a show that is moving in the right direction, True Viking! The show with the potential to form a crew and going pillaging in a foreign monastery… um, maybe we are getting carried away here, oh well, it sounds better than the sewage from the Kardashians. This is our third topic of the week.

Then we have the games played, shout outs, remembrances, birthdays, and special events. We hope you enjoy the show and that we entertain you and maybe even educate you on some of the topics we discuss. Now, we need to watch out for those Chinese hack…er um, gamers with better computer systems. Take care, stay safe, look out for each other and stay hydrated.

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