Ooh, big difference there then. Here in the UK it occupies a similar-ish space as Darlene Love, Mariah Carey, Wizzard, Slade, Shakin' Stevens, Wham and all that. Never felt right to me. I love the Pogues, but it just feels off hearing them played alongside "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day".

The problematic homophobic baggage does also suck too, agreed. Especially as every conversation about the song seems to be about that, specifically!

Fairytale of New York would be thought of more highly if it wasn't so overplayed. I love the Pogues, but hearing it everywhere over the festive season feels kind of wrong. It should be in the same tier as this, and the one by the Kinks.

Possibly one of the greatest nonstandard Christmas songs ever, the Ramones, at a time when they were far past their golden age, give us this pure punk plea to put fighting aside. (Could it have been potentially about Joey and Johnny?) Joey's love of Spector shows strongly here, and it works so well!

They clearly don't care, as if they did, they'd have begun the email with "Play it once Sam, for old times sake."

…Tesco using "Melancholy Hill" in their Christmas advert last year. Or Sainsbury's from using a "bardcore" cover of "Teenage Dirtbag" in 2022.

Bad Manners aren't exactly the band you would associate with the festive season, but this is a great ska tune that I'm surprised hasn't been used for a big fancy festive advert at some point. (Unless it has, and I just missed it!)

I get it's not tonally right for an advert, but that didn't stop…

Whereas I would argue that Santa Claus is Back in Town is a more famous Elvis Christmas Song, Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me has the advantage of not sounding like a parody. This isn't just a normal Elvis song with some Christmas imagery thrown in, this is actually a proper Elvis Christmas song.

Such a gorgeous location for it.

Episode 300 shouldn't be something you feel forced to do. I like the idea of saving the Beatdown for New Year, they're always great fun, but you only get one 300th episode. It should be something that really counts to you, I personally love the "Thew's Personal Collecting Story" review videos!

I've never been the big fan of the dogbone either honestly. Not that I've used it very often, but as I've never found the original NES controllers to be that bad, I've always liked using them!

And the least said about Offroad, who's apparently so untrustworthy and mental that the other Stunticons all hate him more than they all hate eachother, the better.

It always takes me a minute to remember which one is Dead End and which one is Wildrider. Gets even worse when we have to factor in Breakneck!

This is interesting, as the Caddicarus video had totally the opposite effect for me. Originally I was like "Why is this game not a pack-in title? Who would pay for this, it looks awful." But now after watching Caddicarus tackling it, it still looks bad, but now I really want to give it a go!

I can't think of any games that needed to be modified in Japan due to the lack of P2 Start and Select, but it must have needed to be done for things like activating the pause menus in some games, surely?

I didn't know that about the later Famicoms! In retrospect, it is a strange idea, but I suppose these were the early days, where experimentation was rampant.

...edited to reflect this, so the EU and US instruction manuals both say that the Pols Voice has very sensitive hearing, which doesn't mean anything, and doesn't hint at their weakness to arrows at all!

A famous example is the Pols Voice from the original Zelda. They're weak to sound, which in the Famicom version, meant you could shout into the microphone to defeat them. This obviously wasn't doable on the NES, so their weakness was changed to arrows.

However, the instruction booklet wasn't...