Things were very different before Game Fly, Netflix, and Red Box. Heck, even before the now-mostly-defunct Blockbuster, the best place to rent video games was from the local grocery store. Do you remember those weird plastic slip cases that VHS tapes would sometimes come in, or the clear plastic shells for NES carts with a badly xeroxed copy of the box cover inside? Of course you do. Sean and Vinnk wonder if game rental is a good way to distinguish between what is a video game console and what is just a computer. Or maybe there’s no distinction? Which consoles are really PCs in disguise… or vice versa? Maybe there just aren’t any answers, but at Famicom Dojo we’ll definitely try to find them! Also, more listener voicemails!

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See the Nintendo Direct 3DS XL announcement and videos by Smosh after the jump!

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It’s nice to feel like you’ve accomplished something in a game, but rather than bragging about your accomplishments, doesn’t comparing achievements instead make you judge your friends for not being as awesome as you are? Vinnk and Sean reminisce about what they did before achievements and tropies, and if they really enhance the gaming experience — or just feed into already-present addictive gaming behaviors. Also: our first listener voicemail!

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Full confession: I already love Aaron Sorkin. Mostly, I loved Sports Night, which was a two-season series on ABC, which I found to be no end of fun and woefully underrated. It certainly had problems that got in the way of its mass appeal, so its cancellation after two years wasn’t entirely unexpected. It’s been nearly fifteen years since that show started, so Aaron Sorkin must have learned from what did and didn’t make that show work, right?

Oh yes he did, and here are the top five reasons why.

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Granted, it was announced since recording this episode that the 3DS XL is going to have its own circle pad, but that didn’t stop us from wondering a couple of things: a) Why it wasn’t built into the XL, and b) why it wasn’t announced during E3. Sean and Vinnk grapple with the relevancy of the biggest gaming industry event in the US, and come to the terrifying conclusion that just MAYBE Nintendo might not want third parties to succeed…

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Added Content is not something you find much in video games any more. Long gone are the days of Infocom’s "feelies", but great text adventure classics like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had some of the most creative in the business. Vinnk and Sean followup on their "DLC podcast" promise by adding episode content from listener requests! Guest panelist Sindra joins Sean to review the Silent Hill movie, while Vinnk reminisces about the days of hint lines, program books, and peril-sensitive sunglasses.

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Did Nintendo try to steal the show, only to stumble? Is the Wii U just an expansion for the Wii, with only enough extra horsepower to run the GamePad screen? Did Sony and Microsoft play it too close to the vest, or can we expect something greater from them in 2013? Sean and Vinnk talk about the ups and downs (sometimes it feels like mostly downs) of E3, Vinnk’s game of the show Project P-100, and all of the reasons we tell ourselves that E3 wasn’t that great, even thought we just really wanted to be there in person.

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Vinnk interviews an Angel about this digitally-based collectible card game… without any actual cards!

http://www.moonga.com