Mana Break

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Admit it, it's stuck in your head now (sorrynotsorry). In this episode of Mana Break, the systems might be small, but the scale certainly isn't, as we continue our look at handheld gaming systems and Nintendo's worldwide dominance!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're thinking small on this episode of Mana Break, as we look at the world of handheld gaming in another 2-parter! Join me as we explore the early development of video games that can fit in your pocket wherever you go!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Welcome to the first of Mana Break's Mini Breaks! These are going to be slightly shorter, more specific episodes where I talk about important moments in the history of gaming; starting with the very first Easter Egg as we know them!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Today on Mana Break, we're finishing up our look into the life of Gary Gygax, seeing how it all went wrong at TSR, and how the father of RPGs made his mark outside of the D&D world!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're returning to the D&D sphere with today's episode, looking at the life and times of the most important man in its history - Gary Gygax. Join me as we walk through his early days and the founding of TSR, the company that would change the face of gaming!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Today on Mana Break, I make an even more atrocious pun than normal in the title! We're looking at the history of Pathfinder, the biggest competitor to D&D and the new king of the rules-based RPG.

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Today, we're rounding off our Warhammer exploration with a brief interview with Jesse, a good friend of the podcast and overall Warhammer 40k enthusiast extraordinaire. Join us as Jesse talks about his experiences over half a lifetime in the Warhammer community, and all the changes, joys and sorrows of Games Workshop's magnum opus.

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Today, in the wake of an unfortunate interview illness, we're looking at Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Games Workshop's ill-fated attempt at rebooting Warhammer Fantasy that proves that even the most dedicated of fanbases won't accept everything!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Mana Break's moving to a one-man show for a bit, but we'll still be bringing you all the facts about the weird, wonderful gaming world! In this episode, Huw finishes off his look at the major races of Warhammer 40k, where things get really strange.

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Warhammer's got a vast breadth of lore material to explore, so today we thought we'd look at the world of the most popular Warhammer franchise - 40k. Join Huw & Sam as we delve into the lore of the debauched Eldar and the fanatic Imperium, and PURGE ALL XENOS SCUM!!!   Ahem, sorry about that...

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're exploring the world of Warhammer from an outsider's perspective today on Mana Break, looking at Huw & Sam's prior experiences with Games Workshop's flagship product, and the public perception that surrounds it!   P.S. Sorry for the slightly quiet Sam in this episode (and probably the next) - I was trying to deal with the issue of overly loud Sam from previous recording sessions and think I went too far the other way!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're kicking off nearly a whole month of Warhammer-focused episodes today on Mana Break! Join Huw and Sam as they explore the history of Games Workshop, and how three friends took a mail-order board game business and turned it into one of gaming's biggest companies!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We are back! We've rested, recharged and returned to bring you more episodes explore the weird, wild and wonderful world of gaming. Today, we're finishing off our look into console gaming as Sam and Huw go through their favourite exclusive games of the variety of consoles they've owned!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We've covered a lot of history in the last 20 episodes of Mana Break, so it's time to sit back and look at a little of our own! In this episode, Huw & Sam discuss their favourite facts and moments from Mana Break's baby steps into the podcasting world, and what exactly's kept us going.

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're turning our eyes forward for once on Mana Break, as we take advantage of the recent PS5 announcement to talk about what we think the future of console gaming is going to look like. In a sector where we're rapidly reaching a peak of graphics and gameplay technology, how are console developers going to make their offerings truly unique?

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're diving back into the world of consoles once more! In this episode, we're looking at the reign of Sony at the head of the console pack with the PS2, and how new entrants diversified the console market into what we know and play today. And then, one wrong phrasing from Sam sends it all tumbling back into chaos...

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   We're looking at the world of licensed games today on Mana Break. Is it really the cesspool of movie tie-in shovelware it's reputed to be, or do we too-often dismiss an interesting area of gaming opportunities purely because they're based on existing properties?     We're sponsored today by the Super Politics Podcast! If you've got in interest in the weird, zany side of the political sphere, we'd heartily recommend you give them a listen on Spotify!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   It's time for war - console war, specifically! In the first of another 2-parter, we're looking at the early history of home gaming, and how that began to develop into the consoles we game on today!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   Today, we're talking about the world of retro gaming once more, looking at the place it has established for itself in the modern world, and how the impact of those old games can still be felt today!   We're sponsored today by the Super Politics Podcast! If you've got in interest in the weird, zany side of the political sphere, we'd heartily recommend you give them a listen on Spotify!

Listen through to the end on this one - trust us, it's worth it. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon! In this episode, we're looking at the time where an extra-terrestrial visitor managed to kill the home-gaming industry off for years, in the Great Video Game Crash of 1983!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon!   In this episode, we're looking at an interesting little event in the world of arcade gaming, where one game managed to get the US government threatening Nintendo and Sega with trials!

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms. If you'd like to support Mana Break, visit our Patreon! In this episode of Mana Break, we've finally come full circle, and returned to the world of video gaming! We're kicking off our month-long excursion into the history of video games by looking at the time when they truly became a global phenomenon - the Golden Age of Arcades.

Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and most other podcasting platforms! In this episode, we're diving once more into the world of TCGs and DCGs - what makes them so absorbing, addictive, and ultimately expensive?  

Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and most other podcasting platforms! From one tabletop phenomenon to another, we're delving into the history of Magic: The Gathering on this episode of Mana Break. Listen as we marvel at just how meteoric its rise was (seriously, it's bonkers)!

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms! In this episode, Huw & Sam are looking beyond the realm of tables and players, and looking at the reputation of the tabletop sphere in other forms of media - good and bad!

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and most other podcasting platforms!   We finally enter the second month of Mana Break! To celebrate, we're diving into the history of Dungeons and Dragons once more, this time under the watchful eyes of Wizards of the Coast.

In this episode, we're delving back into Sam's experience as a Dungeon Master as we talk about managing larger groups of players, and delve into the dangers of allowing the dice to decide too much!   Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and most other podcasting platforms!

Lockdown can't stop us from broadcasting (although it can lead to slightly crackly mics)! In today's episode, we're delving into the history of the juggernaut that is Dungeons and Dragons  - a topic so broad and deep that we'll need two whole weeks to cover it!

DMing tabletop is a tough ask - you've got to manage players, tell a story and create an engaging experience, all whilst keeping your own power in check. Today, Sam regales Huw with stories from his DMing days, and how he's managed to overcome these challenges!   Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many other podcasting platforms!

Gaming takes many forms, and they have influences in ways you might not expect. Today, Huw & Sam are looking at gamebooks and the idea of interactive storytelling, and how they've impacted our gaming experiences as a whole! Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many other podcast platforms!

Today, we're looking at building the miniatures that make wargaming great! 

The concept of war might just be one of the oldest things around, so it only makes sense that wargaming has a long, storied history too! Today, Huw & Sam explore the development of wargaming from its roots in 18th Century combat strategies all the way through to Warhammer 40k.

Mana Break is more than just a history show! In every other episode, we'll be discussing and talking through topics relevant to gaming and the gaming world as a whole. Today, we're talking about crunch in the video game world - is it necessary evil for producing good games?

Welcome to the first episode of Mana Break. Please join us as we walk through what you can expect from the series, and explore the world of early video games!