It's been quite a while since we last posted a live recording from a Retronauts-related event panel! But even if the world's nowhere close to being back to normal, we've at least figured out how to make live presentations a safe and viable thing again. This week's episode comes from two panels recorded at Midwest Gaming Classic a few weeks ago. First, Nadia Oxford, Kevin Bunch, and Brian Clark help me dig into a pet topic: Classic games that had an outsize influence on Japanese game design bu...
2022-06-06 12:00:07 +0000 UTC
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June 4, 1982: It is very cold…in space…
by Diamond Feit
I know we're experiencing a revival renaissance as older actors and performers increasingly mine their past work for both new and returning audiences, but did you catch the latest season of The Ki...
2022-06-05 13:30:00 +0000 UTC
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As all things return from the '90s to soothe us in these uncertain times, so must Beavis and Butt-Head. Yes, Mike Judge's duo of brainless teens may seem rooted in the Clinton era, but Beavis and Butt-Head received a surprisingly good reboot in 2011, and are set to return with a new movie this summer. So, of course, there's no better time than the present to continue our licensed games journey and examine the surprising amount of adaptations generated by MTV's popular and controversial cartoo...
2022-06-03 07:00:04 +0000 UTC
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You may know Sonic the Hedgehog from his many dubious video games, but did you know he has also appeared in the most debased medium known to mankind: Comic Book Periodicals? It’s true, I’m afraid, but in the interests of Sonic science, I, Stuart Gipp, have assembled a crack team of Sonic comic experts to discuss this phenomenon. I’m joined here by the marvellous Bobby Schroeder, author of the tremendously entertaining blog “Thanks, Ken Penders”, which chronicles every issue of the A...
2022-05-30 12:00:01 +0000 UTC
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May 1982: One of these days, Irem, BANG, ZOOM, STRAIGHT TO THE MOON!
by Diamond Feit
I have no idea if anyone under the age of 30 even reads my work, but if you were born in the 90s (or later), how many times a day do you think about space? Not just idle wonde...
2022-05-29 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Remember last year when Street Fighter II turned 30 years old and we here at Retronauts used that opportunity to talk a lot about Street Fighter II? Well the time has come to talk about a 25-year-old video game (as of February 2022): Street Fighter III.
$5 patrons might have caught 2022-05-23 08:00:04 +0000 UTC
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May 1982: Ah, space mosquitos. The perfect avatar for revenge
by Diamond Feit
Long-time readers of my work (hi mom!) might remember an opinion column I wrote back in 2010 about the 2022-05-22 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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This week's exclusive episode took place in a hotel room in downtown Milwaukee, as so often happens with podcasts these days. I gathered together my fellow Midwest Gaming Classic panelists and forced them to work for their pay by recording a bonus conversation: A talk about the "mini console" trend. Nintendo's Classic NES Edition opened the door to this market wide, but by now just about everyone worth their salt as a console maker has tried their hand at creating a tiny replica of a...
2022-05-20 11:38:50 +0000 UTC
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Thanks to the generous patronage of Andrew Oliveira, we're continuing our Kirby journey right where we left off in episode 401. This time around, we see the passing of the torch, as series creator Masahiro Sakurai completes his Kirby trilogy and begins working on the Smash Bros. series for the rest of his natural life. The next iteration of Kirby may be a little slower and puzzle-based, but it brings to an end an era of HAL-crafted games before the developer puts the series on the back burner...
2022-05-16 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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May 15, 2012: Q-Games invites everyone onto the world stage at 4AM
by Diamond Feit
I think I speak for everyone when I say this ongoing, seemingly unstoppable pandemic has been an ordeal for all of us to endure. It's not just a matter of whether the disease di...
2022-05-15 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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May 3, 2002/May 4, 2012: Superheroes in New York? Gimme a break!
by Diamond Feit
The timeline of my life syncs up closely with the birth and rise of (commercial) video games, which no doubt made the medium more attractive in my eyes. Children are easily distra...
2022-05-09 08:04:20 +0000 UTC
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Something a little lighter this week: Rather than explaining the history of a franchise, games, or developer, we instead take a more personal angle and explain which irredeemably bad games we secretly love. Join myself, Jared Petty, Stuart Gipp, and Kat Bailey as we attempt to rationalize our wretched preferences!
- 04:11 - Rambo (NES): Title Theme
- 17:22 - Ghostbusters II (NES, Activision): The Statue of Liberty Strikes Back
- 24:07 - Police Que...
2022-05-09 06:49:32 +0000 UTC
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It's time for a podcast 65 million years in the making! Or maybe two months—who can say? We've already covered Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster, but unfortunately didn't have enough time to talk about the many games loosely based on it. So, for the sake of being thorough, this week we're devoting 90 minutes to a series of adaptations that mostly turn reluctant hero Dr. Alan Grant into a stone-cold murderer that recently emerged from the killbot factory. On this episode, join
2022-05-06 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Fanfiction. Is it a writer's best friend, the fruits of which should be widely shared? Or is it a secret shame that should be suffocated in Windows folders and smothered at the bottom of socks drawers? Is there any scholarly benefit to telling kids to write about the weird crap Steve and Alex got up to in their Minecraft world? Well, yeah! Plenty!
Fanfiction is packed alongside some long-enduring baggage. It's associated with theft, creative bankruptcy, poor writing, and ...
2022-05-02 13:00:08 +0000 UTC
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April 1987: I'm seeing double! Four dragons!
by Diamond Feit
I've been thinking about a tweet from this March that did pretty good numbers regarding a modern proble...
2022-05-01 13:16:00 +0000 UTC
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Bloomin' Nora, they'll let anyone write these now. Oh, hullo! I'm Stuart Gipp and you're about to listen to an episode of the podcast "Retro Nauts". Now, normally this podcast exclusively covers NES games, but today I'm presenting you with something from the leftfield, baby; it's the Commodore flippin' Amiga!
And, of course, I'm joined once again by enthusiastic Internet Remembering Man Dave Bulmer, he of Sonic the Comic the Podcast fame. He brings a crucial element of verisimillitude t...
2022-04-25 13:00:08 +0000 UTC
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April 24, 2012: "A New Day" dawns for adventure games
by Diamond Feit
There are two contradictory points of view regarding human beings: Those who believe we have free will and make our own decisions, and those who believe our entire lives play out according to a predet...
2022-04-25 01:35:36 +0000 UTC
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Good morning/afternoon/indeterminate temporal void—it's time for another patron-exclusive episode. With this episode, we begin another multi-part deep dive into the history of a key game developer. In this case, the developer is Taito, and the period under examination is their early days leading up to the company's big transformation in 1985. You'll hear quite a few familiar classics discussed in this episode, along with some games that, by all accounts, no longer seem to exist in any meani...
2022-04-22 12:02:55 +0000 UTC
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In 1993, Hollywood did the seemingly impossible by releasing the first true video game adaptation: Super Mario Bros. And to put it simply, things didn't exactly go as planned. Thanks to studio meddling, fired directors, injured actors, and compromised visions, Super Mario Bros. lurched into theaters in May of 1993, and quickly retreated in shame when the general public didn't know what to make of it. But are there hidden gems lurking underneath this film's fungus-covered exterior? On this epi...
2022-04-18 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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April 13, 2012: Fezzes are cool
by Diamond Feit
We lost a legend this week: Gilbert Gottfried, professional loudmouth, passed away at the age of 67. The Brooklyn native started performing stand-up comedy as a teenager in the 1970s, so from the moment I came into this wo...
2022-04-17 13:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Nintendo has announced that they're cutting you off next year. No more Wii U and 3DS games for you! At least not from the eShop. Considering how many games you have to sort through on those systems, we figured the least we could do to help would be to gab for a while about the best games—the ones you should download while you still can. Joining me this week are Chris Kohler (you know him) and Eric Caoili (you probably know his site, Tiny Cartridge; if not, what!?) to offer whatever meager s...
2022-04-11 10:39:43 +0000 UTC
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April 4, 1997: Nintendo invites N64 owners to go to Hell
by Diamond Feit
Doom.
Doom doom doom doom doom doom. Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom! Doom doom doom doom? Doom, doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom. Doom doom doom doom doom: Doom doom doom.
...
2022-04-11 01:39:29 +0000 UTC
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For the first time ever in the 15+ year history of Retronauts, we're bringing you a full-length movie commentary! And we're chatting about a film that deserves a serious examination and evaluation: 1993's Super Mario Bros., just in time for its 29th anniversary. Sometimes it's inspired, and most of the time it's inexplicable—but nevertheless, you'll enjoy watching along with this information-packed commentary. So get ready to sync up and trust the fungus as Bob Mackey and Henry Gil...
2022-04-08 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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We've had a lot to say about Street Fighter II since it turned 30 last year (more SF 'casts are coming soon, BTW) but in 1992 Midway's answer to Capcom's fighting franchise made its debut and video games haven't been the same since. Yes, Mortal Kombat first appeared in arcades 30 years ago and shocked the world with its "realistic" violence due to its use of digitized actors instead of cartoon characters. Oh, and the fighters can murder each other, I should have led with tha...
2022-04-04 11:00:01 +0000 UTC
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March 1992: Make Mine Mutants
by Diamond Feit
As a life-long fan of comic books, movies, and video games, there's a question I am forced to ask myself (and all of you): Who is the best superhero team of all time, and why is it the X-Men? They are neither the strongest, ...
2022-04-03 13:01:02 +0000 UTC
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This week sees us revisiting the Squaresoft of the 1990s—specifically, the Squaresoft of 1995, when the company could seemingly do no wrong. They'd just released Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger back to back, fer cryin' out loud! And eventually... they did do wrong. They flew too close to the sun. Bit off more than they could chew. Got too big for their britches. Were hoisted by their own petard.
But enough about The Spirits Within. Hey-o!
...
2022-03-28 13:00:08 +0000 UTC
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March 20, 1997: This column is a creature of chaos
by Diamond Feit
From a literal timeline perspective, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is now 25 years old. From a video game design perspective, Symphony of the Night feels like a treasure chest sent...
2022-03-27 14:45:01 +0000 UTC
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The Ranking Hootenanny is back, and this one seemed somehow inevitable: A rundown of the 15-ish two-dimensional titles in the core Mario series. After all, I enraged the world a few years ago by publishing a factually and objectively correct ranking of the Mario games on Polygon, so it was only natural that I would want to permanently enshrine those opinions here in this podcast. Unfortunately, Nadia, Stuart, and Diamond were having none of it and decided to team up...
2022-03-25 15:18:40 +0000 UTC
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Unfortunately, Nintendo just delayed Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp indefinitely due to real-life circumstances. But this week, in the spirit of American sticktoitiveness (and because we didn't want to change the schedule), we're looking back at Intelligent Systems' surprisingly long-lived turn-based war strategy series. Over the course of 20 years, Advance Wars boiled down the incredibly complex design of PC war strategy games into a colorful, console-friendly experience that could still be ...
2022-03-21 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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March 7, 1997: Windows PCs run red with Blood
by Diamond Feit
Horror in the 1990s found itself occupying a strange place. The genre had exploded in the 1970s and 1980s as exploitation and slasher films migrated from the grindhouse to America's ...
2022-03-20 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
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