The PlayStation 2 is arguably the greatest video games console of all time. Over 44 competing picks for the system's best games, Matthew, Samuel and two other Giant Men – Dave Scarborough and Ashley Day – will prove why. Vote for the winner in the announcements channel of the Back Page Discord.

This week's music is from the Katamari Damacy soundtrack by Yuu Miyake, Asuka Sakai, Akitaka Tohyama, Hideki Tobeta, Yoshihito Yano and Yuri Misumi, as well as the Gitaroo Man soundtrack by COIL, Tomohiro Harada and YUAN.

Find the full list of picks at Patreon.com/backpagepod.

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Games Court is back! 23 listeners' pre-owned purchases go on trial in front of Judge Castle. Only the pathetic attorney Samuel Roberts can save them (or help send them to their deaths).

This one is strong in the first half, drags for its third quarter, but brings the energy back for the final part. A net gain, for our great podcast!

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One hour of totally unfounded waffle and pointless commentary.

This week's music is from the Super Mario Odyssey soundtrack by Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii and Koji Kondo.

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Two top 10 lists of our favourite games from 2024.

This week's music is from the Balatro soundtrack by LouisF.

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Silly awards from silly men, ahead of the real GOTY pod next week. Thanks to this year's guests, too, for providing insights on their favourite games of 2024.

This week's music is from the FF7 Rebirth soundtrack by Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamauzu and the Helldivers 2 soundtrack by Wilbert Roget II.

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Each host must pick the best 10 games that have a score of 79 or less on Metacritic! But who will win out with that tricky criteria in mind? And what gold (if any) lies within the amber ranks of the reviews aggregator? Vote for the winning selection in the Discord announcements channel for the next week.

Some rules that might be handy to know:

• A game needs to have scored below 80 on at least one of its original launch formats to be eligible (so if it got 79 on Xbox 360 but 80 on PS3, it would count)
• But, it can't be more than 10 points lower – this is to avoid shitty ports getting in the mix (Bayonetta on PS3 versus 360, for example, or Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 versus PC)
• No remasters or remakes can be selected

Enjoy! This week's music is from The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story by Yûki Hayashi and Shogo Yamashiro.

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The quiz part goes on for far too long. The mailbag bit has some low energy answers. But: it is an episode of this podcast.

This week's music is from the No More Heroes soundtrack by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda.

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Our favourite first and third party games on every PlayStation console, just in time for its 30th anniversary.

This week's music is from the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura.

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In part one, hear us discuss what it's like to work on a games magazine when it's closing down, the rise of prestige games mags, and why crowdfunded independent media is so hard to get off the ground.

A Profound Waste of Time founder Caspian Whistler joins us for part two. Hear about the creation of this successful prestige print project – and check out APWOT issue 5's Kickstarter here, which ends in a couple of weeks.

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Beefy games chat this week on all of the above – plus The Rise of the Golden Idol, FF7 Rebirth and Apex Legends.

Thanks to Matthew 'Big Matty C' Castle for the edits this week.

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We all have too many games to play. One of our favourite guests, Jay Baylis, joins us to discuss how we all gathered massive backlogs – and what can be done to cure it.

Matthew had a cold for this one. But he still went through and edited out all his coughs, bless him. 

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