FLAVOR TEXT: Pokémania

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In September 1998, the U.S. was introduced to the franchise that would soon become a worldwide phenomenon: Pokémon. After only 18 months, Pokémon was everywhere--on TV, in car CD players, in school cafeterias, and on kids' backpacks and bedsheets. You couldn't walk 5 feet inside a Kmart and not see something with Pikachu's likeness on it. How did this come about? Why, all of a sudden, was every child aged 7-14 suddenly screaming for their parents in to buy them booster pack upon booster pack of Pokémon cards in the summer of 1999? And, why oh God why is there a Pokémon Christmas album? Find out the answers to all these questions and more on our deep dive into the late 90s cultural phenomenon that was Pokémania.

Special thanks to our first-generational Pokémon Master, "@mgrum54" for commissioning today's episode. If you're interested in comissioning your own FLAVOR TEXT, come check out our patreon at patreon.com/debatethiscast.

Spooktacular Review-a-thon:

  • Step 1: Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Goodpods, or anywhere else you can write reviews!

  • Step 2: Take a screenshot of your review, post it to social media, and tag us @debatethiscast

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Music for Debate This! is provided by composer Ozzed under a Creative Commons license. Check out more of their 8-bit bops at www.ozzed.net!

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Episode 78: We Live In A Shorts-ciety

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Oh boy, here come those dang investors again. They just won't STOP asking us to pitch them new mashups of old videogames. And it's like their asks are getting more and more hacky and uninspired each time...like, this week they just screamed "Make NPCs a protagonist!" and then sat there, nearly frozen in place.

So we had no other choice than to pitch a series of titles diving in on extremely problematic premises like cryptocurrency, fast fashion, and the gig economy!

Interested in the new MCU content but can't wade through the sea of seemingly endless titles and spinoffs? Well fear no more dear listener, the crew at Debate This! is here for you with a weekly recap podcast breaking down every character and mysterious Easter eggs. Check out The Ploose Is Loose! on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcatcher apps.

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Ep. 76: Forged In A Ding Dang Hellfire

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The suits at Discovery Ploose were so jealous that we were the only podcast talking about the Disney+ shows that they approached us to record an exclusive videogame-themed episode of History Channel's Forged in Fire. Don't ask them, just trust us. It's totally legit and definitely part of the FiF canon. Definitely.

Speaking of premium streaming services, how about those MCU shows? There's so gosh darned many of them coming out that you'd need to take a part-time job learning all of the through-lines. Well fear no more dear listener, the crew at Debate This! is here for you with a weekly recap podcast breaking down every character and mysterious Easter eggs. Check out The Ploose Is Loose! available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcatcher apps.

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SIDEBAR: Product Placement in Games

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It's been a while since we all gathered around the pretend Zoom campfire and told some personal CUP NOODLES® IS THE PERFECT BLEND OF TASTY BROTH AND ZESTY TOPPINGS THAT TAKE ONLY 3 MINUTES AND A MICROWAVE TO MASTER. NO COOKING REQUIRED stories about favorite moments in video games.

Andrew recounts his time with Final Fantasy 15, Kyle gushes about Buger King's Xbox series, and Matt FOR MORE THAN 45 YEARS, NISSIN CUP NOODLES® HAVE BEEN WARMING BELLIES AND PUTTING SMILES ON FACES. THE ORIGINAL INSTANT RAMEN IN A CUP WITH NO ADDED MSG. CUP NOODLES®: IT'S FAMILY IN A CUP recalls Mario Kart.

THE NEW SPICY LIME SHRIMP FLAVOR WILL HAVE YOU SAYING 'I'LL HAVE MORE CUP NOODLES® PLEASE'! Please give us money.

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Episode 64: 99 Bottles of My Cat's Amoxicillin On the Wall

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Well good morning and a fine how-do-you-do folks! Have the regular aches and pains of daily Wild West-era life got ya down? Looking for a cure for that small case of Being Eaten By a Coyote? Step on up and see for yourself the wonder and majesty of a spray bottle that can cure the wounds of animals and Pokémon gods alike. Experience an exotic concoction smuggled from the far reaches of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that is made of vegetables and bugs. Force this murky bathtub liquor down your frail gullet that was made in the war-torn apocalypse that is the Fallout wasteland!

Debate This! is now on Patreon, y'all! Subscribe at $5 a month to access our all-new premium feed, featuring the monthly adventures of Forborgürf And The Office Drones.

Check out more of our incessant arguments at debatethiscast.com and keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

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Episode 52: Everything Changed After the Chili Wars

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Too often we've witnessed countless whirlwind romances take flight atop the Empire State Building and have watched too many supervillains blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. It's time for other lesser-known American cities to get their time in the spotlight. And so the head engineers at Debate This! Games, Ltd. are designing some of the cities in which we've lived into the next greatest AAA video game. Yinz guys want to drive Crazy Taxi-style dahn the Parkway? How about an open-world RPG themed around independent chili vendors? And is Daytona Beach just its own version of a zombie apocalypse?

Debate This! is a dumb show where grown men yell at each other over video games and comics. Check out more of our incessant arguments at debatethiscast.com and keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

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Episode 44: A Rear Without a Santa Claus

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Following the announcement that Sakurai and his team are releasing more DLC characters for Smash Ultimate in 2020, everyone out there has been speculating who they think the next additions will be. We could certainly do that for you, but it takes a much bolder team of content creators to instead tell you who they think will NOT be the next DLC characters in Smash Ultimate. And God help us if they make fighters out of Longhorn from 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker, Bad Mr Frosty from ClayFighter, and Gooigi, an obvious pervert.

Keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

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Episode 42: Why is Muk So Horny? (ft Will Grant)

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The release of Pokemon Sword and Shield is just days away. And, instead of adding to the controversy, we are doing what we usually do and avoid confrontation altogether. So instead, we decided to mash up the worlds of the WWE together with Pokemon to give you the all-new Professional Pokemon Wresting League. Ground Rules: No Legendaries and no Fighting Types.

Special thanks to our guest, Will Grant, for joining in this Pokemon smack down! Will is one-half of Blasting Off Again, a Pokemon anime watch-along podcast by The Upford Network. Check them out at upfordnetwork.com.

Keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

he King's walkout: Part 1 and Part 2

The Duke's walkout: Part 1 and Part 2

Goldmuck's walkout: Link

Clefairy's walkout: Link

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Episode 30: Two Baldwins Deep (ft. Giovanni Colantonio)

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The 1993 film Super Mario Bros is notorious for 1) being very bad, and 2) inadvertently creating a sub-genre of crappy movie adaptations of popular video games. So this week, we’re finally going to right this wrong and re-shoot the Mario Bros movie the right way. Problem is, we don’t actually create new concepts, we just steal from the likes of Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, and...the dudes from Super Troopers. Thank God we brought in guest expert Giovanni Colantonio to help pen this masterpiece.

You can listen to more of Giovanni talking about video games on Left Trigger Right Trigger, or check out Fullmetal Bazinga, an improvised science-fiction audio drama based on the final season of the Big Bang Theory!

Keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

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Episode 28: Agent Kirby’s Pillow Palace

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DC’s Blackest Night arc in the mid-2000s finally accomplished the thing that 30 years of comics preceding it couldn’t—it finally made the Green Lantern cool by adding other Lanterns of different colors of the spectrum. So we decided to overlay some of our favorite Smash Bros characters onto these lesser-known Lanterns to make some truly unstoppable forces. We’ve got a zombified R.O.B. that worships death, an Incineroar with rage-induced bloodfire vomit, and everyone’s favorite eldritch horror, Kirby!

Check out more incessant arguments at www.debatethiscast.com and keep the conversation going by following us on social media @debatethiscast.

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