Predator defecation, Digital Distribution & Poor Accounting

Deviboy has gone missing. What nefarious act has the DJ performed? Where is our co-host? Don't worry, he isn't dead, just busy.

It's enough to make your butthole clench. Or it would be, if you were a frog. A species of beetle has been discovered that used predator defecation in order to escape being lunch. It's a bit gross, but points for style.

It's time to enter the future and go entirely digital, according to Take Two's CEO. DJ likes his feelies too much to stop buying physical collectors editions though. Maybe we could convince him with a VR house full of VR collectables?

If you need motivation to get your accounting in order, it turns out animators in Japan are being short changed by the incompetence of the studios' finance teams. Poor business skills in a highly in demand creative industry? Say it ain't so!

This week DJ did nothing of note while Professor hiked across Iceland with a baby.

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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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Error, Atari VCS, My Friend Pedro & Dead neurons

Flash is dead. Long live Flash. Kongregate has decided to shut their doors to new releases. This is truly the end of an error. Let's move on to something more secure now. After decades of trying to get around the web filter at school to play weird indie games, kids will have to find something else to do.

The Atari VCS is due to come out soon, and it's a horribly overpriced set top box. The hardware sounds hackable, but if you're buying it to play VCS games you're wasting your money. Seriously, you can get original Ataris much cheaper.

My Friend Pedro is coming back to haunt the nightmares of evil gangsters everywhere in a TV series from the creator of John Wick. This series will only be worth watching if they manage to pull off the wild stunts and action of the game, but they've got a pedigree.

The first video footage of a dying neuron shows the way your brain breaks down. The footage clearly shows a hit being carried out by the Glial Cell gang, famous for killing any brain cell that gets in their way. Check it out, this could lead to some cool medicine.

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Pokemon Snap, Apple Lootboxes, Super Collider & Cyberpunk 2077 featuring Stephen from Sigmate Studios & Comics2movies

This week, Deviboy returns from his exile, and Stephen from Comics2Movies and XCT joins us to discuss a new comic.

Devi brings news from the far off land of Nintendo. It's time to get your cameras out for the New Pokemon Snap. Apart from Nintendo's hopeless naming, it's shaping up to be an expanded photography game for the new generation. We all hope they fit in the fun easter eggs and interactions.

Oh no, Loot Boxes! Apple are being taken to court for exploiting children via the App Store. We think we've got a solution to the problem too, so be ready to send us your opinions on the system.

Supercollider? I hardly know her! CERN are designing a 100km collider almost 4 times the size of the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC failed to open a portal to hell and lead to a demon invasion, but maybe the Future Circular Collider will. Somebody get Doomguy on speed dial.

Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed again, but to tide us over until the release a comic series titled Trauma Team. This also gives it the accidental honour of being the first piece of Cyberpunk 2077 to release. Until then, keep working to create a hyper corporate dystopia so we can all live out our Cyberpunk fantasies.

In gaming, Professor went up against space card sharks in Star Realms, Deviboy relived his childhood in Raze 2 and Stephen fell in love with Hearthstone.

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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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