Episode 443: Years-in-Review Revue - 1982 & ’92

I don't know if any publication has had quite so much impact on Retronauts over the years as Wikipedia. It's not that Wikipedia is some comprehensive repository of human knowledge (though it does make a very handy starting point for most research); it's that it simply exists. When I kicked off this show back in 2006, the mere fact that we were even discussing old games and obsolete game hardware was novel in and of itself, and we rarely needed to dig deep to bring much to the conversation, given that no conversation really existed in the mainstream gaming press. But now, you can head over to Wikipedia or fan wikis for nearly any game of any significance and find a veritable buffet of surface-level info to nosh on, meaning that our simply skimming over a topic wouldn't add much to The Discourse nowadays. 

And that's fine by me! I like digging into the details. But the knock-on effect of all of this really shows clearly in these Years-in-Review episodes. Back in the primal days of Retronauts, we could cover multiple decades (and five-year midpoints in between!) in the course of a single episode. Now, Wikipedia's "x year in video games" articles exist and do the same thing (with hyperlinks for further reading), so we end up spending a lot more time talking about the impact of a given year's events and releases than we used to... which means we can barely get through a single year per episode anymore. Blame those roguish Retronauts East types for wanting to have meaningful discussions, I tell you what.

Anyway... I continue to do my best to fine-tune an ideal format for these episodes. The elimination match approach I've taken here seems pretty solid! But even so, we barely made it through 1992, because everyone got all chatty about the particulars. The absolute nerve.

Music this episode:

• 05:41 - Blade Runner: Main Title
• 16:34 - E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: End Credits
• 31:15 - The Thing (1982): One Last Thing | Nirvana: "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
• 42:34 - Street Fighter II (SNES): Blanka Stage
• 51:47 - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Time of the Falling Rain
• 1:02:32 - Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: The Moon
• 1:10:22 - Mario Paint: Flyswatter (Level 2)
• 1:20:35 - Virtua Racing (Arcade): Congratulations
• 1:31:40 - Streets of Rage 2: Alien Power
• 1:43:35 - Soul Blazer: Invitation to the Earth
• Closing - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Staff Roll

Thanks as always to Greg Leahy for the edits and John Pading for this week's cover illustration.