One classic game, one long conversation, every week.
Each episode picks a single game — Super Mario World, Perfect Dark, Super Mario Bros. 3 — and works through it with guests who know it inside out. The conversation wanders into design choices, hidden secrets, and personal memory, then finds its way back.
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Still Loading is a video game podcast about history, culture, and the games themselves, released weekly. Host Josh Koval structures nearly every episode around one title. He rarely does it alone. Guests arrive from other shows and corners of the retro community — Zach from Classic Gaming Brothers, Ty Schalter, Darren Hupke, Brian Riggsbee, Rick Desilets, Jiggylookback — and the format is closer to a shared appraisal than an interview. The Super Mario World episode is a good sample of the method. The conversation lays out why the levels grew larger and why 96 exits exist, connects that to checkpoints and the save system, and then argues honestly about whether the game got easier and whether easier is a problem. From there it drifts to speedrunning and how prestigious a Mario World run is. That drift is the point, not a flaw. The Perfect Dark episode spends real time on the little 3D cheeses tucked into secret areas across the game's levels, then on a genuinely unsolved mystery involving Cassandra — the kind of loose end the show is happy to leave open and hand to listeners. Running alongside the numbered episodes are the Minis, where Josh and Dexter work through single episodes of old animated series. They cover The Super Mario Bros. Super Show and The Legend of Zelda cartoon, sometimes with a guest like Luigi's Apartment, and the pleasure is in noticing an albatross flapping one wing at the eight-minute mark, or reading a Triforce riddle aloud and refusing to let it go. Themed stretches give the run a shape. Mario Month 2026 works through the original Super Mario Bros. series in order, episode by episode, so newcomers can drop in on whichever game they actually care about. Patreon supporters get their names read at the top of each episode, and Josh has covered the Muppets, all the James Bond films, and all the Fast and Furious films over there. The tone is warm and a little scruffy on purpose. Josh will open an episode explaining that he recorded it while sick and could not split the audio tracks, and that transparency is part of the appeal. Jokes work as transitions back to the subject rather than detours from it. Sign-offs turn into running gags. It is a show that assumes the listener has affection for these games and enough patience to hear a tangent through to the end.
Made for: Listeners who grew up with these classic games and want the design history without a lecture. It suits anyone who enjoys retro-gaming conversation that has room for hidden secrets, animation errors, and personal memory.
What sets it apart: Most retro-gaming shows either recap or analyze; this one does both in one pass, moving from checkpoint design theory to hunting hidden cheese models without changing gears. The Mini episodes covering old Mario and Zelda cartoons frame-by-frame are a genuinely unusual companion strand.
A show about video games, video game culture and video game history. New episodes every Sunday at 7PM EST.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Still Loading turns close attention to old games into lively conversations about design, preservation, research, and the culture surrounding play.
Josh Koval treats old games as things to be played, inspected, and argued over rather than sealed behind nostalgia. Still Loading pairs close discussion of titles such as Super Mario World, Perfect Dark, and Agent Under Fire with conversations about development history,…
Perfect Dark hides cheese, and your oddly specific curiosity has found its people.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A pool, a royal mystery, and one badly missed drain put cartoon logic on trial.
A swimming-pool search gives this Zelda cartoon discussion its sharpest shape. Zelda and Link follow the Triforce of Wisdom's clue toward a drain, while a balloon, a chain, and magically appearing underwater helmets turn the sequence into a compact burst of cartoon logic.
Perfect Dark's hidden cheeses and abandoned web mystery give its strangest details fresh life.
Perfect Dark comes through as a game full of small, strange rewards, and Josh Koval's conversation with his guest has a good feel for where those rewards hide.
A warm, technically curious look at Super Mario World's design, speedrunning life, and improbable code.
Super Mario World is treated as a design object rather than a nostalgia trigger, with its familiar surfaces read for structure, intent, and consequence.
Itching-powder Bob-ombs and a one-winged albatross turn "Jungle Fever" into prime Mario oddity.
Still Loading uses its pre-Mario Month detour for a close look at The Super Mario Bros. Super Show episode "Jungle Fever" and the live-action segment "Dance." Josh Koval and Dexter Morrell get the most mileage from the cartoon's stranger details: Bob-ombs loaded with itching…
A fond, specific Bond-game discussion built around Vanquish chases, an EMP objective, and breezy driving missions.
Josh Koval's Road to First Light kickoff finds a clean angle in a Bond game built around the Vanquish, an EMP, and driving sections that feel loose in the right way.
A grounded look at the editorial work behind a journal of game histories.
Still Loading frames Rom Chip as more than a journal of game histories: it becomes a look at how that kind of scholarship is shaped before publication.
A book-led look at first-person shooters from 2003 to 2010, grounded in developer perspective and easygoing game-history talk.
Still Loading frames first-person shooters from 2003 to 2010 as a living piece of game history, not just a run of releases. Josh Koval speaks with Stuart Main, author of Hurt Me Plenty, about why that stretch matters and how the book uses behind-the-scenes perspective to revisit…
Host Josh Koval interviews Stuart Maine, author of 'Hurt Me Plenty,' a book chronicling the history of first-person shooters from 2003 to 2010.
Host Josh Koval interviews Laine Nooney, managing editor of ROM Chip, a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to video game history.
Josh Koval and guest Chris Carpenter discuss the sixth episode of the Legend of Zelda cartoon.
Josh Koval and co-host review episode 9 of the Legend of Zelda cartoon, 'Stinging a Stinger', after a month-long break.
Josh Covel introduces a mini episode discussing The Super Mario Bros.
Eve Plum plays a pizza delivery girl in "Pizza Crush," where Mario keeps getting free pies and Luigi asks who is paying for them.
Perfect Dark's adaptive enemy AI, alt-fire weapons, and mission-based objectives are the main hook in Josh Koval's conversation with Jiggy from Jiggy Lookback.
["Josh Koval frames Still Loading #390 as the penultimate Mario Month 2026 episode and centers it on Super Mario World, the first 16-bit Mario game on Super Nintendo.", "Zach from Classic Gaming Brothers says his Mario start was a church-yard-sale NES with Mario/Duck Hunt and Zelda 2, while Chris, the British Bond Addict, links the game to Mario 64, Super Mario Advance 3, and Yoshi.", "The discussion highlights Super Mario World's 'perfectly weighted' controls, the manual-free first level with a giant Bullet Bill and Koopa shells, and the Yellow Switch Palace that changes earlier stages.", "Josh and the guests compare it with Super Mario Bros.
The Still Loading Podcast continues Mario Month with a discussion of Super Mario Bros.
Josh Koval and guests Brian Riggsbee and Rick Desilets discuss Super Mario Bros.
Mario says, "If food isn't pasta it doesn't count," after Toadstool lists three guavas, four breadfruit, and two bananas.
The villain plot turns on clone blood, embassy dead bodies, and a British diplomat named Reginald Griffin.
Josh Covel interviews Tommy Keough about his new book on the history of handheld video games.
Host Josh Koval interviews author Stuart Maine about his book covering the history of first-person shooters from 2003 to 2010.