The most wonderful and/or tedious time of the year has come once more: It’s Not-E3 2026, when all of the video game giants share their biggest announcements for the year. As always, we’re here to recap it, with thoughts on Sony’s State of Play, the Summer Game Fest, and the Xbox Showcase, across which we saw the unveiling of God of War Laufey, the sooner-than-expected Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the long-awaited reveal of Persona 6 and more gameplay of Persona 4 Revival, and much more, including Xbox’s completely incoherent exclusivity ‘strategy.’ We also find some time to quickly review Saros, the new PS5 exclusive from Housemarque, and talk about 007 First Light from Hitman developers IO Interactive. A very silly Monthly Ten rounds out the episode, in which Jonathan pitches 10 Star Wars projects for Disney to announce and then quickly abandon.

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:04:33

General Gaming News: 0:04:33 – 0:31:08

Sony State of Play: 0:31:08 – 1:13:12

Summer Game Fest: 1:13:12 – 1:59:45

Xbox Showcase: 1:59:45 – 2:47:34

Saros: 2:47:34 – 2:53:50

007 First Light: 2:53:50 – 3:14:39

The Monthly Ten: 3:14:39 – 3:46:59

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://www.japanimation-station.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels!

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

We’re back for a fun, variety-filled Monthly Stuff episode filled with our own personal obsessions. After going over some Nintendo and Xbox news, including the announcement of Star Fox for Switch 2 and a changing direction for Game Pass, Jonathan talks about recent news surrounding the One Piece anime remake by Wit Studio, before going in-depth on the Netflix live-action series after finally watching it over the last month. Sean talks about the recently-finished Journal with Witch anime (starring podcast fave Sawashiro Miyuki), and then goes deep on his continuing Resident Evil completionist adventures, with particular attention paid to finally playing the much-maligned Resident Evil 6. And finally, for The Monthly Ten, Sean is challenged to come up with 10 marketing campaign for Xbox that are even dumber than the ‘This is an Xbox’ slogan. He doesn’t manage to do that, because that slogan truly cannot be beaten, but he comes up with some good ones all the same.

TIME CHART:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:13:55

Nintendo News: 0:13:55 – 0:36:25

Xbox News: 0:36:25 – 1:02:13

One Piece News: 1:02:13 – 1:13:33

Netflix’s Live-Action One Piece Thoughts: 1:13:33 – 1:39:19

Journal With Witch: 1:39:19 – 1:56:50

Sean’s Resident Evil Adventures Pt. 2: 1:56:50 – 2:54:35

The Monthly Ten: 2:54:35 – 3:14:28

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://www.japanimation-station.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels!

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman

The news just won’t stop coming, so we once again have an overstuffed Monthly Stuff episode to break it all down, from the reveal of Nvidia’s horrific slop-fueled DLSS 5, to Sony raising prices dramatically on PS5 systems, to the announcement of a new Lord of the Rings movie from Stephen Colbert, and more! Once we’re doing breaking all that down, Jonathan tells us all about his adventures in Pokémon Pokopia, while Sean explains how he spent spring break playing - *checks notes* - 7 different Resident Evil games. And finally, Jonathan is on deck for The Monthly Ten, as Sean tasks him to come up with 10 increasingly ridiculous new acronyms for the State of Texas’ annual standardized tests.

Enjoy!

TIME CHART:

Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:04:37

Video Game News: 0:04:37 – 1:20:00

Movie News: 1:20:00 – 1:55:31

Anime News: 1:55:31 – 2:01:33

Jonathan’s New Computer Stories: 2:01:33 – 2:17:00

Ultraman Nexus: 2:17:00 – 2:33:50

Pokemon Pokopia: 2:33:50 – 2:50:27

Sean’s Resident Evil Adventures: 2:50:27 – 3:26:23

The Monthly Ten: 3:26:23 – 3:43:57

Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com

Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://www.japanimation-station.com

Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vK

Subscribe to our YouTube channels!

Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation

Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcast

Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff

Original Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/

©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman