After a slightly time-bending return (it’s been a year… sort of), Chris and Peter are back in the system and catching up on what they’ve been playing. Chris dives into the cartoon-styled shooter Mouse: P.I. For Hire, a rubber-hose animated throwback in the spirit of classic 30s cartoons, while reflecting on difficulty, storytelling, and the strange modern obsession with bolting extra systems like card games onto everything.

From there, things spiral (as they tend to) into a deep and entirely necessary discussion about lockpicking mini-games, wrestling briefcases, and why some mechanics stick in your brain long after the rest of the game has faded.

They then jack back into ReBoot to tackle Season 1, Episode 6: “The Belly of the Beast.” It’s another surprising departure from the expected “game of the week” format, instead focusing on Enzo and Frisket in what feels like an early sidekick episode. The brothers question why the series pivots away from its core concept so quickly, explore the odd low-stakes nature of kidnapping in Mainframe, and inevitably Chris brings up the topic of bowel movements inside a computer system.

Along the way, there’s talk of the origins of CGI animation (including connections to the iconic Money for Nothing music video), the quirks of 80s and 90s kids’ TV structure, and the enduring mystery of why sidekick characters are almost always the worst.

Noobs by C.G. Regan

Cover Art by Charlotte Regan

Music by Peter Regan