We’re four generations deep into reasonably realistic 3D graphics based on nothing more than colored triangles, but if you go back to the first fully 3D console graphics the picture isn’t so pretty. And yet we loved these games all the same. Was it am amazing as we thought, or were we just kidding ourselves? Vinnk and Sean try to take off their rose-colored glasses and give a serious look to the Nintendo 64, Playstation, and Sega Saturn. What game franchises were born in that generation? Which ones met their untimely end?

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/91

[Read the rest of this entry…]

We take a trip over to our friend’s house where everything sounds different. Er, where you play the games that you didn’t play at your house because you didn’t own the system, didn’t own the game, weren’t ALLOWED to own the system or game, or just like the atmosphere better than at your place. And for this episode, we invited a few friends over to our house! Zac, aDam , and Ernie of No Topic Required take over the show for this April Fool’s Day episode. Supposedly Sarah Rattle was there too, but we sure didn’t hear her!

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/90

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Sometimes the show runs a little long, or goes completely off-topic. That’s when we create an audio bonus, exclusively for the website! When we first started the podcast, we fully intended to create such extra content to help drive traffic back to the website since there was no other way to listen to it. But, as it turns out, people just don’t find that enticing! So, despite the desire to keep things “exclusive”, we want to share these audio bonuses with you in a way that most listeners will actually be able to hear it. They’re just so good! Sean and Vinnk comb the three year history of the Famicom Dojo Podcast for its best extras, and put them into this one episode: Vinnk unveils the hidden secret behind the unlicensed developer Color Dreams, Sindra and Vinnk bond over their love of Silent Hill, Sean gives a brief history of Superman films, and also explains how he got started making videos… before he was old enough to shave.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/89

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Does anyone of the generation who grew up with video games have an excuse to not understand how much (or rather, how little) video games affect people? So many buy Rated M games for their kids, completely ignoring the rating altogether. Which begs the question: just who are these ratings for? Vinnk and Sean go over a completely non-linear history of video game ratings, how Night Trap for Sega CD helped start the ratings firestorm, and they have evolved more into advertisements than effective parental warnings.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/88

[Read the rest of this entry…]

In the ever-shifting landscape of video game development, there are major players and the scrappy underdogs. Kickstarter has given smaller studios a bigger voice, but back in the day before the Internet was a thing, which companies set themselves apart? And which ones have fallen apart since? Sean and Vinnk talk about their favorite publishers and developers of today, the classics of yesteryear, and ponder whatever the heck happened to them. Some evolved, some, disbanded, and some should be put out of their misery. Did your favorites make the list?

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/87

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Before EA, official sports titles were more spread out, and used in all kind of ways. Games like NBA Jam are hard to come by these days (barring updates to NBA Jam). Before annual installments of Year of the Same Game, you had crazy sports game ideas that were one and done. These weren’t simulators, like we have today, but imaginitive riffs on the sports to make up for any technical proficiency that hardware
of the time may have had. And that’s what makes them Rad Sports Games. Vinnk and Sean talk about their favorite titles, including the aforementioned NBA Jam, Punch Out, Bases Loaded (and a bunch of other weird baseball games), and even Scotti Pippen’s Slam City! If you’ve never played it before, why… it sure is something else. Will we ever see their like again? Aside from EA picking up the IP for NBA Jam from Midway, that is…

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/86

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Sometimes a game gets a second life on a new platform or console, typically with upgraded graphics, additional sound effects and/or voices, and additional Internet-enabled features only a Millennial could love. Sometimes a familiar name is slapped onto an entirely new game that
seeks to upend the status quo for the franchise and provide a clean slate — usually with a new developer, and sometimes a new publisher —
to begin totally anew. Sean and Vinnk compare video game remakes to reboots, decide which games deserved them, and which actually got them, and which ones they ended up playing and liking anyway.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/85

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Phil Bond on the subject of f2p gaming: “When you make a game where paying any money whatsoever feels like cheating, that has to be a mistake — right?” Or, as Vinnk puts it, you can pay to play more, or pay to play less. Sometimes both in the same game. Just don’t say that Nintendo should follow this model, or… we’ll say something not nice, or something. Vinnk and Sean trade stories of their particular Free-2-Play addictions (Puzzles and Dragons, and Candy Crush, respectively), and their guilt over never paying any money for these games, leaving it to “whales” to support the entire system. And Vinnk may have inadvertently made his daughter into a gold farmer.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/84

[Read the rest of this entry…]