Magazines have themselves become a retro medium, but what if someone could use that to their advantage in a dying industry? Double-win if you can tie it to retro video games. That’s exactly what we have with our guests this week! Vinnk and Sean welcome co-founders Mike Kennedy and Mark Kaminski of Retro Magazine to talk about their Year 2 Kickstarter, and their favorite retro games. They also stick around for Future Retro and Pile of Shame to share some really interesting games we (or at least some of us) haven’t played before!
Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV: http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/111
What are your favorite scary games? How about just ones that remind you of Halloween, or are about traditional “scary” critters, but are just too darn cute to be scary themselves? Or, depending on what actually scares you, extreme isolation? Sean and Vinnk invite Sindra and David back to the podcast for this special Halloween episode! And we may or may not discuss the P.T. Silent Hills demo… JUMP SCARE!!
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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.
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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
The thing about being a gainfully-employed adult and parent is that time becomes your most precious commodity. So any time you use for games can only be used on the good ones — if you can figure out which ones those are. Vinnk and Sean reveal how they balance their real lives with gaming life, how the Wii U is great for that, and get all excited over Future Retro that’s really just a quasi-remake of a 20 year old game.
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It’s amazing how things looked a year ago, with Nintendo all but left for dead by the gaming press. Now, with a much-needed lift by Mario Kart 8 and a killer showing at E3, Nintendo looks like it might earn the title of number one console (in Japan) — and not just because the PS4 is selling so poorly there. And perhaps do better in America too. Whatever works. Sean and Vinnk skip Future Retro and Pile of Shame to dedicate the entire episode to E3 reactions. And maybe pepper that stuff throughout the show anyway. You better believe we won’t be letting Ubisoft off lightly, either.
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Nintendo appeases the hardcore Super Smash Bros. tournament crowd with a wired adapter for GameCube controls, playable at the Smash Bros Invitational. The newest Mario Kart was released last week, selling out Pro Controllers everywhere, crashing the Club Nintendo website, and increasing sales of the Wii U in the UK alone by 666%. In less than a week, Mario Kart 8 has sold 1.2 million copies worldwide. YouTube announced a monetization scheme for users uploading Nintendo videos. Is Nintendo finally listening to its fans, or did it just take this long to unlock the Wii U’s potential? Vinnk and Sean put down Mario Kart 8 long enough to discuss what Nintendo is doing right, and if there are bigger things on the horizon. The Wii U is having a renaissance, and it’s not even E3 yet.
Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV: http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/97
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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