The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast

After more than a decade of squandered potential, BioWare is no more. We eulogise the studio and explore how it became a cautionary tale for everything that can go wrong for a successful game developer.Plus, at the end, you get some bullshit BioWare awards. We're still The Back Page, after all!This week's music is from the Mass Effect 2: Overlord soundtrack by Christopher Lennertz.

We start with some difficult news...Cheers to everyone who has supported the podcast, past and present. We're delighted you're still along for the ride.

No, not the episode 300 you were promised. For a (hopefully) obvious reason. Instead we fire up The Back Page time machine once again, setting the dial for 1998. Many call it gaming's greatest ever year. Ocarina! MGS! Half-Life! Gran Turismo! StarCraft! There's no arguing with that lot. Or is there? Find out as two contrarian chrononauts break down the main events of the year, recap the highs and lows of E3 and reveal their top ten lists.This week's music is from the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck, and the Baldur's Gate soundtrack by Michael Hoenig. You can get us, as ever, at backpagegames@gmail.com.

Matthew flew to Germany and played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, which is rather a nice surprise.Games discussed: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Gears of War: E-Day, Control Resonant, Valor Mortis, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Dicevaders

We're off this week, but here's our MGS2 episode from August. Support us at patreon.com/backpagepod if you enjoy what we make!

Probably the least relevant and most tangent-heavy mailbag episode to date, and that's saying something. Here's Samuel's piece on game names for PC Gamer.

Our third and final attempt to tackle the big games of September reaches Sony's biggest release of the year and the latest Silent Hill entry.The developer of Orbitals is Shapefarm, not Shapeform as Samuel incorrectly stated. Duh.

Been quite a while since we did a 'games journalism craft' episode – this is one of those, as we're joined by former music journalist and Vice senior editor Mike Diver for a lively chat. Hear about the time Mike met Paul McCartney! Sadly, it wasn't about his terrible Destiny song that Matthew rather likes.Mike's book, Aliens: The Video Games, is available now. 

Emergency Nintendo Direct chatter, powered by the reveal of sequels to two of our favourite Switch games (Metroid Dread and Kirby and the Forgotten Land), then another pile of games from the September 2026 mountain.