No messing about, here’s the deal.

We’ve been champing at the bit to get ourselves back on the interwebs with our own brand of gaming related entertainment so we’re bringing The Games Cast back to life with a new direction and focus. If any of you remembered our experimentation with TGC Radio, you’re part way to knowing what we’re doing.

Gone is the monthly pre-recorded show because now we’re going to be hitting you with a weekly live show with a whole new format bringing you gaming chat and news, competitions but all utterly live!

Best of all, each and every show will be recorded and available to listen to at any time! So need to worry about missing an episode.

The best part of it is that we are teaming up with the awesome Stuart and Andy from The Monday Movie Show to make the beginnings of an awesome line up of shows for you all to enjoy. These guys are already broadcasting every week so make sure you check out their show; we are extremely proud that we can team up with them!

We’ll be announcing the dates of our first weekly shows very soon so make sure you keep an eye on our twitter feed as well as our home right here.

This is a massively exciting time and we’d love to have you along for the ride!

So lets start with something simple.

We’re sorry we disappeared without a trace; no podcasts, site posts, tweets, nada. All three of us realise that there are, or maybe now were, a lot of good people out there who have supported what we were doing and stuck with us and we kinda turned our backs on all of it.

Let me just be clear on behalf of Phil, Paul and I, this wasn’t intentional, we basically lost sight of how much we love the show and trying to produce something entertaining for you guys about a subject we all love; video games.

Suck-up apology done.

Why am I posting now on this site after so much time?

We’re coming back with a new show, a new direction, and overall a more live feel to our shows. Quite literally.

Right now we’re busy working on the specifics to get our new format working and will be announcing more details very soon both here and through twitter (http://twitter.com/thegamescast), but if any of you remember TGC Radio, keep thinking down those lines.

For now, thanks for reading and visiting, and we’ll keep you updated very soon!

In this months episode Paul, Duncan and Phil discuss the next-gen consoles, Team Bondi, Facebook Gaming, Portal 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Fear 3 and much much more. Paul manages to spend most of his time playing Tetris on Facebook but does make some very good points on the topic of the next PlayStation and the WiiU, before returning to Tetris.

Paul and Duncan catch up on Bioshock Infinite as they watch the recent gameplay trailer during the Retro Tunes competition, which is now on 4200 MS Points (or PS3/Wii equivalent).

And, just for the record, Duncan says Bioshock Crash mode first!

Despite the obvious connotations of the number, episode 13 is less about evil and bad luck (unless you count our tech fails, but they’ve happened since day one!) and more to do with us reaching the same ep number with our previous pod-casting incarnation.

The Vagusnet.com Podcast is where we all got bitten by this lark, yet after episode 13 of that show, the site imploded due to some daft argument, that we actually can’t remember the details of anymore, with the site owner. The show stopped, so did the site mostly, and we disappeared into the pod-casting ether. Five years on, all is good, the Vagusnet site owner of the time is still a very good friend of all of us, and we’re back in the groove with TGC.

Secretly we all wondered if we’d reach episode 14, and I have to say, there’s no reason to doubt we’ll go well beyond 14. We have to, there’s a whole bloody schedule of shows to work through over the next 12 months at least!

Enough of the past, what about the present. This months edition of The Games Cast sees all three of us discuss the Dead Island trailer, the PS3 ban/unban app and Sony’s iPad “killer”, along with all the usual features and competitions. Except for one main difference; the Caption Competition isn’t quite what it used to be. You’ll have to listen to find out why!

Episode 13 will be available within the next 48 hours if you’re reading this before 5th March, or is available now for those of you who only just realised we had a website too!

Happy gaming!

I think we need to offer an apology to everyone, as we’ve had plenty of questions about where this episode had got to, but it has taken much longer than the three of us would ever hope to get this one out the door.

Put simply, we’ve been hit with consistent illness amongst the team which has meant that whilst we had recorded the show on time, putting it together soon became a nightmare. However, we have been holding a number of discussions about how we can change that, but I’ll save that for a separate post.

So yes, episode 12, “Hob Nobs Make You Cough” (that’ll make sense when you listen the show, or maybe it won’t!) is now available for download if you subscribe to us through iTunes. It is also available through your RSS reader or direct from our site.

This time we discuss the PlayStation hack-fest, the Nintendo 3DS, as well as all the regular features such as Siralan, the Retro Tunes competition and a whole bunch of random off-shoot discussions that have no bearing on the original topic we started with but end up being quite good anyway.

If you’d like to discuss anything you’ve heard in the show, then head over to the special forum thread for this episode.

Merry Christmas to you all and happy birthday to us! We are now one year old and as a special treat we thought we’d make a podcast. To help celebrate the festive season and our first birthday we’re running a very special competition – make sure you listen out at the start of the ‘cast for some more information.

Back onto the podcast and this month sees the glorious truimphant return of Paul who, having discovered the Americas, Asia and Australasia, returns with as much wit and wisdom as he had when he left. (Not much then! – Duncan) We also try out some new tech as we record with Skype’s new Group Video Calling feature proving that sometimes it’s best not to see who’s on the other end of the line!

We talk about the all new Lara Croft, LudAlan covers the war between Kinect and Move for our Christmas pennies plus there’s outrage when most of the cast discover Abe’s Oddeseye has been out on Steam for a while now.

Competitions

We have a winner on the RetroTunes competition – the lucky person walking away with 4,200 MS Points – well done – which means it’s an all new retro tune and this time it’s a Christmas special. It’s also very tricky so a lot of kudos if you can get this one – plus of course the obligatory 2,100 MS Points to get us going.

Duncan’s got a winner for his caption competition with a fantastic two month Boomerang Premium Package up for grabs with a new picture due soon.

Paul has a brand new all-improved competition with some great new music and a really easy question. The winner get’s to pick a T-Shirt from GamerPrints’ excellent range of T-Shirts so get your answers in NOW!

Anyhow, this month’s podcast also sees Duncan and Phil talking about the Kinect launch titles in SirAlan as well as the news surround the PSPhone.

The RetroTunes competition rolls over this month and is now at 4200 MS Points (£40 PSN, Wii). We’ve also got Duncan’s One-Off Unique Monthly Competition and Pauls Hard-As-Buggery Competition.

Yes Fil, it's F1. Nice.

Immediately after Friday’s Eurogamer Expo we all hit the pub and recorded Episode 9 of The Games Cast podcast! Hear our views of the games and hardware on show at this years show, direct from Earls Court. Featuring Paul, Duncan and Phil as well as two special guests, Charlotte and Rob. The first section really was filmed in a pub so apologies for the background noise!

We discuss Dance Central, Kinect Adventures and Joyride off the back of three of us managing to play Dance Central before the masses were let into the show hall. See our Flickr account for some extra special pictures and a previous post for Charlottes videos of the event! Also on the hit list is 3D gaming as well as Nintendo, Sony and the Playstation Move. We get our teeth into Zelda, F1, the now-delayed-again Gran Turismo 5 and Brink, Assassins Creed 2 Brotherhood, even now I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.

Not forgetting the squeezing in of the awesome Retro Tunes competition, Duncans’ one-off monthly competitions and Pauls’ ever-so-difficult competition (with new question!)

Good lord, it’s a new post and a new podcast too!

The new episode of the this very podcast was recorded on Bank Holiday Monday with just Phil and Duncan hosting as Paul unfortunately could not make it due to work commitments.

There’s too much to list it all but have no fear Duncan and Phil still manage to talk about the Xbox Live Price Rise, Eurogamer Expo 2011, the PS3 hack as well as SirAlan fitting in over 10 games this month plus all the usual competitions.