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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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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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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The Wii U Pro Controller presents two problems: 1) It’s just like the Wii Classic or Wii Classic Pro Controllers: the adoption rate is poor, nothing that works on it NEEDS to work on it, and we totally forget about it. 2) It actually takes off, and threatens one of the core value propositions of the Wii U. Only Nintendo makes games for it, and 3rd parties just ignore it after a while. Vinnk and Sean discuss the problem of hardware fragmentation in video game systems, and trot out some well-worn examples as well as more recent ones: the Sega Genesis 32x, Android’s newest Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and more!

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In the waning years of the 20th century, secret codes were a common feature in games that would unlock secret content or make the challenge a bit less difficult. But now if you want those extras, you can “unlock” them for just a few dollars! Is that this a terrible shift in developer entitlement, or another example of how gamers feel like they shouldn’t have to pay more than a few dollars for a new game? Sean and Vinnk look at the things that developers do to get more money out of gamers, and what gamers do to make developers believe that they can’t get paid fairly for their work. Used games aren’t evil, but some developers want you to think they are. Developers aren’t evil, but there are gamers who… well, you know the rest. Is one side more entitled than the other?

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What companies or individuals make games that you will buy just because their name is on it? Vinnk and Sean examine the perils and the pitfalls of Developer Worship, and wonder aloud if there’s really anything our favorite personalites and companies can do to make us hate them. We list some of our favorites: Harmonix, Square and Enix (before they were one company), BioWare, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda 51 and more! Which ones are your favorites, and why?

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