Home Podcast Born on the 23rd
PLAYING OUT OF CONTROL · Episode 2

Born on the 23rd

Sonic at 35, the N64 at 30, and the week physical media broke and came back.

June 29, 2026 ·34:53
Show Notes

One date, June 23rd, gave us both Sonic the Hedgehog and the Nintendo 64, five years apart to the day. This week we celebrate Sonic at 35 and the N64 at 30, raise a glass to Quake at 30, and dig into the strange week where physical media took a beating and made a quiet comeback at the same time.

GTA VI is shipping with no disc in the box. Xbox just pushed the Series X to 750 dollars. One Sega veteran is trying to make all 4,500 Sega games playable before he retires. And I pulled a 1998 review off an old Zip disk that accidentally proves the whole point of this show.

Playing Out of Control Gaming. Retro and classic game reviews, PC to Nintendo, every system. Founded at a lunch table in 1998. No bought scores. No filters. Just opinions.

In this episode

  • GTA VI ships with no disc, and two stores refuse to stock it
  • Physical game spending rises for the first time since 2009
  • Xbox raises prices on August 1st
  • Yosuke Okunari’s mission to preserve all of Sega
  • The EU declines to require game preservation after Stop Killing Games
  • Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35
  • The Nintendo 64 turns 30, and the SGI chip Sega said no to first
  • Quake turns 30
  • The Beige Years: Myst and the lost art of the game box
  • On the Shelf: Console Wars by Blake Harris
Chapters
  • 00:00 Cold Open: Born on the 23rd
  • 01:05 What Is Playing Out of Control?
  • 01:49 The News: GTA VI Ships With No Disc
  • 03:15 Physical Media Is Up for the First Time Since 2009
  • 04:50 Xbox Raises Prices on August 1st
  • 05:23 One Man's Mission to Save All of Sega
  • 06:55 Quick Wins: Tekken, Castlevania N64, Barbie, ARMA
  • 07:24 The EU Won't Require Game Preservation
  • 08:35 Delisted This Week: SOS Ops and Planet of the Apes
  • 09:10 Fast Hits: EverDrive, Retroid, Metro Siege, Wallop
  • 09:47 This Week in POCG History (1998 to 1999)
  • 10:17 Windows 98 and the StarCraft Demo
  • 11:32 Fantasy War, The Station, and a 1.3 Million Coincidence
  • 12:31 The F-22 Review Off the Zip Disks
  • 14:06 The Beige Years: Myst
  • 18:09 On the Shelf: Console Wars
  • 20:43 The Feature: Same Day, Five Years Apart
  • 21:15 Sonic Turns 35
  • 25:49 The Nintendo 64 Turns 30
  • 27:32 The Chip Sega Said No To
  • 31:10 Quake Turns 30
  • 33:23 Your Question of the Week
  • 34:27 Coming Up Next
Games in This Episode4
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog is a platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. Released in North America on June 23, 1991, it was created to give Sega a flagship mascot and…
Myst
Myst is a first-person graphic adventure game developed by Cyan and published by Broderbund. Created by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, it was first released for the Macintosh in September 1993 and later ported to Windows and many other platforms.…
Quake
Quake is a first-person shooter developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. Released for MS-DOS on June 22, 1996, it followed Doom and pushed the genre into true real-time 3D, rendering levels and enemies as full polygonal models…
F-22 Lightning III
F-22 Lightning III is a combat flight simulation game developed and published by NovaLogic for PC, released in 1999. The third entry in NovaLogic's F-22 line, following F-22 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor, it puts the player in the cockpit…
Hardware in This Episode1
Nintendo 64
Nintendo's 64-bit cartridge holdout, and the home of the analog stick.