Retronauts? This here is Legonauts. Thanks to Patreon supporter Jeff Vlasek, we're taking a listenable look at the lucrative Lego license. Star Wars, Batman, even a quick squint at Harry Potter—if you can build it, and they made it into a video game, we're discussing it. Unless it's not one of those three things. Please join first-time host and full-time stud Stuart Gipp with Duplo-citous guests Jeremy Parish and the extremely aforementioned Jeff Vlasek for a complete load of blocks as we g...
2021-09-27 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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September 26, 2001: Star Trek boldly goes backwards
by Diamond Feit
There's this saying that's never sat right with me: "too much of a good thing." I object on the grounds that good and bad are opposites and if something is truly good, then it is not bad and I want a...
2021-09-26 13:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Chocobos! For over three decades, these large, flightless friends have been a mainstay in the Final Fantasy series, with their roles growing from glorified horses to creations that sustained several spinoffs. But just what are Chocobos, why were they invented, how have they changed over the years, and, most importantly, why aren't they real? On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and Andrew Vestal as the crew becomes amateur ornithologists in an attempt to study the wi...
2021-09-24 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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I did not blink when the PlayStation 2 turned 20 years old in 2020, but now that some of its biggest hits are turning 20, these anniversaries are starting to get to me. Case in point: Grand Theft Auto III was originally released in October of 2001, after a brief delay caused by you-know-what.
I shouldn't be coy, as that eventful day in history will come up during our conversation about Rockstar's infamous open-world crime-em-up, and we did in fact record this episode on Septemb...
2021-09-20 14:00:01 +0000 UTC
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September 14, 2001: Nintendo squares off against PlayStation and Xbox with a cube
by Diamond Feit
On occasion when writing this column, I've had to argue defensively to support my position that 2021-09-19 13:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone,
In 2021, Patreon started allowing creators to offer annual (instead of monthly) memberships to patrons. And to make a short story even shorter, we just flipped that switch. So if you'd like to sign up for a year of the Retronauts Patreon, you'd save 10% compared to paying for 12 months individually.
If you're a current patron and want to upgrade your subscription to an annual one, go into your "My Memberships" tab while logged in and click on the "or save 10% if...
2021-09-18 17:56:37 +0000 UTC
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Hey folks,
In a classic case of "Wanna feel old?" the Retronauts podcast turns 15 next month! And since things are still COVIDy out there and we can't have a proper in-person celebration like we should, we'll soon be recording a podcast to commemorate the occasion. Back in 2016, we put on 2021-09-17 17:20:11 +0000 UTC
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August 6, 1986: Peace in space sells...but who's buying?
by Diamond Feit
When I bought my own Nintendo Entertainment System, it was not a blind purchase. I had already seen the console in action at friends' houses, and I knew enough about Nintendo to have some idea o...
2021-09-15 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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I suppose you were expecting a "podcast not found" joke this episode, but no dice! Instead, all you get is a couple of great conversations about video games.
First, Bill Nielsen joins us to help field his own patron request to discuss Gravity Rush (also feat. myself and Todd Ciolek). We realize Gravity Rush doesn't quite hit the 10-year cutoff mark, but that time is coming very soon. The PlayStation Vita is almost a decade old! Unbelievable.
In ...
2021-09-13 13:00:08 +0000 UTC
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September 11, 2001
by Diamond Feit
It was a Tuesday. An extremely ordinary Tuesday.
I was driving to work at the post office in Armonk, New York, just as I did every day for the previous four years. It was a lousy job that I did solely for the paycheck, the kind of job where you count the minutes until the end of your shift comes. To offset the dreariness of my workplace, I had Howard Stern on the radio during my commute, determined to amuse myself ...
2021-09-12 13:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Look, I know. We've talked about Metroid before. More than once. But how often is it that you can slot an episode right at the midpoint between a franchise's 35th anniversary and the release of its first proper sequel in 19 years? Especially when said franchise is so well loved by the cast and crew? Sometimes, it's worth retracing our steps just to revel in what got us started on this whole thing in the first place.
Jeremy Parish, Ray Barnholt, Shivam Bhatt, and Shane Bette...
2021-09-10 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
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35 years ago, a tiny team at Nintendo R&D1 crunched their way through a the development of a weird little game called Kid Icarus: a quirky, slightly alienating action-RPG starring a chubby angel who can't stop falling through platforms. Despite the lead character's prevalence in marketing from the early NES days, and his role in the classic Captain N cartoon, Nintendo barely seemed interested in touching this IP ever again, and let it lay dormant after a farmed-out 1991 Game Boy sequel. T...
2021-09-06 07:00:04 +0000 UTC
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August 31, 1996: I don't like to lose!
by Diamond Feit
Ahh, Die Hard. The Metroidvania of movies. The 1988 film rewrote the rules for action movies an...
2021-09-05 22:01:01 +0000 UTC
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We're doing a bit of cleaning up behind the scenes at the Retronauts Patreon, and one change we've made can mostly be chalked up to our good friend COVID-19. Remember that guy? He's been making our lives a living hell in America for the past 18 months! And because of that, throughout 2020 and 2021, we've been unable to travel and put on the three live shows formerly unlocked by our Patreon.
I s...
2021-09-03 22:49:22 +0000 UTC
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July 31, 2011: Love is not love which alters when it columbidae finds
by Diamond Feit
I don't think this news will surprise anyone, but I had an extremely lonely adolescence. My circle of friends was rather small and all male, which means my formative years were spent coveting company with girls. This proved to be a self-defeating pattern, as the last thing a tee...
2021-09-01 13:01:05 +0000 UTC
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We have a patron episode this week about a topic that is frankly far more expansive than a single episode could begin to hope to tackle! Per Andrew Oliveira, we have begun The Kirby Discourse. How much Discourse did we tackle in a single recording session? Uhhh, not much. In the space of an hour and a half, Stuart, Henry, Andrew, and I managed to cover Kirby's Dream Land, its sequel, and Kirby's Adventure. That's it.
Well, don't worry. We love Kirby. There'll be more K...
2021-08-30 13:00:01 +0000 UTC
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August 23, 2001: Slash Slash Boom
by Diamond Feit
I'd like to think I've been very open and upfront about my fandom for Resident Evil, especially given that the original game turned 2...
2021-08-29 13:01:01 +0000 UTC
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For the past 43 years, Garfield has been an ever-present and extremely popular orange blob within the dwindling world of newspaper comics, and spawned an Indiana-based empire for creator Jim Davis. And with said empire came the creation of landfill-clogging merchandise, which, of course, included video games. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and 2021-08-27 07:00:03 +0000 UTC
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July 19, 1991: Final Fantasy gets twice the bits and twice the emotion
by Diamond Feit
I was a spoiled child. I never thought of myself that way, not when I saw the lavish houses or elaborate presents my friends growing up had access to, but hindsight shows me that I di...
2021-08-25 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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It's been a long, long time since a Retronauts East session has happened in person. Something about a lockdown? Anyway, it happened again! And probably won't happen again, due to changing life circumstances—but don't worry, Retronauts East fans. This lineup isn't going away, just working a little differently.
But since this was a somewhat momentous occasion on a couple of levels, we decided to go for a more personal, experiential topic than usual: The game experiences (and, y'know, ga...
2021-08-23 12:00:00 +0000 UTC
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July 12, 1991: Konami delivers unto Game Boy owners their New Messiah
by Diamond Feit
Subjectivity is a fact of life. We can discuss and analyze media all day and all night, but in the end, our opinions are just our personal feelings. There are games that I hate which h...
2021-08-22 13:00:06 +0000 UTC
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We try to cover the full span of video game history as much as we can on this show, but we're not ashamed to admit that sometimes we play favorites. And so, an episode on the Super NES's early days, tied to the system's 30th anniversary. Have we talked about the NES before? Yes. Will we talk about it again? Hell yes. And it'll rule, just like it does here.
Bob, Kohler, and Stephan of The Art of Nintendo Power convene th...
2021-08-16 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
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Video games can be quite astonishing sometimes! For example, we're constantly astonished that a series as cool and offbeat as Wario Land exists. We're also astonished that, despite them collectively being one of the best things in the Nintendo library, they don't make 'em anymore. It's been more than a decade since the final entry in the Wario Land series, and 20 (!!) years since the first of the two games covered in this episode debuted. That seems like too many. Nintendo. ...
2021-08-13 11:25:59 +0000 UTC
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When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles struck gold at the start of the '90s, everyone wanted the piece of the action. That included British developer Rare, who created a similar group of green heroes to capitalize on Turtlemania: the Battletoads. Though it's mostly remembered for a singular stage within the first game, and only lasted a few short years, the Battletoads series attracted enough nostalgia to receive a brand-new release 26 years after the last one. But is there any appeal for this IP ...
2021-08-09 07:00:04 +0000 UTC
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In what may well be an all-time Retronauts record for rapid topic follow-ups—or at least for the episodes I've hosted—this week we field a patron request from Andrew Duff to create a sequel (or is that sequels?) to Episode 380, which focused on Breath of Fire and its first sequel. No prizes, then, if you have managed to deduce that this episode looks at Breath of Fire III and IV. Will we tackle Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter in an equally speed...
2021-08-02 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
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In the early '00s, a Capcom employee named Shu Takumi had a simple dream about making an adventure game about the many trials of a harried defense attorney. 20 years later, the Ace Attorney series spans a whopping 11 games—with two long-awaited titles finally seeing an English language release this month. So how did this humble little idea, designed to exist as a single creation, end up creating a mini-empire, with spinoffs and adaptations in the form of anime series, movies, and musicals? ...
2021-07-30 07:01:06 +0000 UTC
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Over the past couple of years, we've dedicated several episodes to the legacy of the Mario franchise beyond the main man himself. The vast reach and proliferation of Mario games, combined with its relatively small cast, means their supporting characters have a unique place in video gaming that can't really be compared to those of any other series or franchise. We've looked at Mario, Toad, Yoshi, and Wario; now we wrap things up with an in-depth look at the legacy of Her Royal Highness, ...
2021-07-26 13:00:01 +0000 UTC
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A long-overdue episode this week, as Christopher Hansen asked us to tackle Koei sims (particularly Romance of the Three Kingdoms) back in December 2019. The chaos of the following year didn't do any favors for my efforts to find Retronauts regulars who were comfortable weighing in on a hefty and complex topic like this—but thankfully, fellow Greenlit Podcast Network members Aaron Littleton and Mat Bradley-Tschirgi volunteered to step up to the plate and share their love of this small but th...
2021-07-19 13:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Alright, this is it: The last chance I'm giving you to take a breath with one of these light, frothy, movie-focused podcast episodes. From here on out, most of the rest of 2021 is going to be some pretty intensive anniversary episodes... lots of them with a value of "20" factoring into the equation. But before we do, here's a celebration of the recent culmination of the years of public demand for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game to be relisted. In light of its recent reissue, an...
2021-07-16 14:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Nearly a decade after the last entry, Telltale Games launched Tales of Monkey Island, an episodic take on the classic adventure series—and the first installment in nearly 20 years with input from creator Ron Gilbert. And while it suffers from some of the drawbacks of Telltale's format, this five-chapter adventure game swerves away from the expected formula to deliver some truly memorable Monkey Island moments. On this episode, join Bob Mackey and
2021-07-12 07:01:03 +0000 UTC
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