Shovel Knight is more than a retro-styled game made to make you wistful of a bygone era — it makes you wish that era had never ended, and gives a glimpse of what it may have been like if it hadn’t. From emulating an actual Famicom sound chip to sticking almost entirely within the capabilities of the NES hardware, Shovel Knight is nothing less than a work of art. It’s also pretty fun to play! And it learns lessons from the last three decades that its proper 8-bit brethren never had time to internalize. Vinnk and Sean share their views on Yacht Club Games’ maiden voyage, heap praises on the Metroid series and Sakura Wars in Future Retro, and try to talk themselves into taking some more games off their pile of shame.

Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV:
http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/101

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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

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In space, no one can hear you scream. Before Pitch Black, Dead Space, and any other space horror, there was Alien. The horrifying Xenomorphs scared moviegoers shitless throughout 3 films (and a forgettable 4th along with the two Alien vs Predator movies), hundreds of comic books, and several video games. Alien Trilogy, an FPS from the 32 bit era, bought players up close and personal to the xenomorphs like never before. While it clearly pales by today’s standards, Alien Trilogy matched the dark mood of the films like no other video game before it, and few games have afterward. Playing as series heroine Ripley, you shoot your way through a storyline loosely based on all 3 films in the franchise as you shoot various Aliens throughout an abandoned space colony. It’s you, along against the aliens in the colony’s dark hallways. While the graphics show their age, and the level design tends to be a bit confusing, Alien Trilogy stands as one of the best FPS games of the 32-bit era. There is little chance of it being available in any form, so this is a disc you’ll have to hunt down.

15 years ago, moviegoers packed theaters to watch Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, a movie in which a group of pilots team up to fight off an alien invasion. The movie was nothing short of an epic in its day. Sadly, the obligatory movie tie-in video game was no where near as epic. Basically its a screw up of a flight simulator with repetitive missions, crappy play control, and worse flying physics. You fly around each level, take out all the enemies, then destroy the enemy superweapon in 45 seconds, rinse, and repeat. At least you can unlock new planes, but they play like crap too. Oh, and there’s a Will Smith soundalike! So yeah, this game’s a bust. You want to battle aliens while flying around? Go play some Star Fox.