Some of our favorite Famicom and NES games are nearing the end of their respective lifespans. Famicom Disk System games degrade, no matter how well you take care of them. Cartridge games with battery backups will eventually lose power, along with your data, and never be able to save again. Even the batteries that help consoles like the PS2 and Dreamcase keep time are fizzling out. Is there anything we can do to stop it. Sean and Vinnk ponder the move to digital media as a way to preserve their game collections, but at what cost? No, literally, what would that cost? Especially since only a portion of those games are even available on anything but the original release media.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/107

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EA has thrown its stake in the ground, and determined that it does not need or care to support Nintendo on the Wii U. No Frosbite engine, no current development on Wii U, and a senior developer who openly tweeted that Nintendo’s console platform was “crap”. So much for that “unprecedented partnership”! Vinnk and Sean make the obvious comparisons to Dreamcast (which was the last console EA totally shut out), speculate on the future of proprietary, company-branded game console hardware, and try to determine if Nintendo even needs EA in this generation… or any other.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/74

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There are so many consoles on the market that it’s easy to forget that there used to be so many more. Not only have big players like Sega come and gone, but Atari has gotten out of the hardware race, as well as Bandai (now part and parcel of game publisher Namco).

Vinnk and Sean reminisce about their favorite failures, from the Dreamcast to the Lynx, and the Wonderswan to the 64DD.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/63

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Heavy Metal is a comics anthology magazine that began life in France under the name Metal Hurlant. It gained notoriety due to its heavy emphasis on sex and violence. It was bought over to the U.S and renamed Heavy Metal in 1977, and was purchased and published by Kevin Eastman. Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Kevin Eastman. The U.S version of the magazine featured several news articles that tied it into the Heavy Metal culture. The series spawned two feature films: 1981’s Heavy Metal, a set of story sequences done in different art styles (similar to The Animatrix) and 2000’s Heavy Metal 2000, a feature film featuring a character played by B-movie actress Julie Strain. The game also spawned 2 video games, F.A.K.K.2, a PC game sequel to Heavy metal 2000, and Heavy Metal:Geomatrix, a 2001 Dreamcast/Arcade game from Capcom. Although it uses a gameplay style similar to Spawn: In the Demon’s Hand, various gameplay issues and a lack of content cause the game to fall flat on its face. It doesn’t help matters that the game has very little to tie it in with the comics.
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It’s been 15 years since the Nintendo 64 was released. Before that we knew it as the Nintendo Ultra 64. Before that, Project Reality. How does Nintendo’s last catridge-based system stack up? Vinnk and Sean take a look back across the turn of the millennium, and how the Nintendo 64 fulfilled some of its promises, but also how it lead both of them to discover the broader world of gaming: both domestically and overseas.

[Listen to the episode after the jump…!]

A dozen years after Dreamcast’s launch, it is still one of the most revered and loved systems. Cult status doesn’t count for the NES or the Playstation, everyone had one of those, but if you got a Dreamcast in it’s all too brief 19 month life span, you should listen to this episode.
If you don’t know why we care then you DEFINITELY need to listen because you missed some great games, and it is not too late to play many of them!

Listen live on this page, or subscribe via RSS or iTunes.
Direct Link:Powetcast 105: I Dreamed A Dreamcast
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When we last left off, SeanOrange had quasi-seriously prophesied that the Wii U might be the next generation’s Dreamcast. With rumors of a new Microsoft console being announced by E3 2012, will those fears come to pass? And would that be such a terible thing?

Direct Link: Famicom Dojo Podcast 05: Dreamcast Final Days

If Sega were still making consoles today, what would they have brought to E3?

Complete show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/5

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Powet Presents something that’s not very standard fare for the site (or me, for that matter), but is close enough to geek topics near and dear to our hearts.

Happy birthday, Dreamcast!