Recent installments of the Super Smash Bros. series have included characters from third party companies as fighters joining the Nintendo menagerie. Game developers often hide references to their other titles in some of their games, either by obscure references or through sharing characters — sometimes where they don’t really belong. Gamers seem to enjoy these cross-overs and in=jokes… but why? Vinnk and Sean share their favorite cameos in well-known games as well as more obscure titles. Future Retro looks more at the recent past, and Pile of Shame spans a couple of generations.
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April 21, 1989 saw the release of the Nintendo Game Boy in Japan. Bundled with Tetris in the North American market, the system would go on to dominate the mobile gaming market and give Nintendo a lead that they have not lost since.
I still have my original Game Boy and many of it’s games. Share your memories of the system and your favorite games in the comments!
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
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
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…
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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.
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Spearheading the revival of adventure games, Broken Age Act 1 was released last week on Steam for the Kickstarter backers (and press reviewers). A decision to black out reviews until later in January was reversed only a couple of days after the game came out. Broken Age is just that good. Even though we haven’t finished it (as of recording this episode), we wholeheartedly agree that it will become an instant classic. Sean and Vinnk talk about what killed the adventure game for our generation, revel in its revival thanks to companies like TellTale and Doublefine, and crowdsourcing for an explosion of indie games on websites like Kickstarter. We can’t agree on just what an adventure game is, exactly, but that’s part of the fun, right?
Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV: http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/83
Vinnk was in the US for a few weeks, and came back to Japan with a new Wii U and a bunch of games! Then just last week Nintendo announced the $50 price drop and the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD bundle. Sean bought a 3DS XL right before the seemingly-ridiculous 2DS announcement, but he ain’t even mad, bro. Sean and Vinnk discuss their new systems, similarities (good and bad), and how they feel about purchasing them just before major shakeups in the market. We also learn that Sean doesn’t think Super Mario Galaxy was that great of a game! :O
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