Well, whaddya know. It's another episode about a media property.
OK, but not really. Unlike some of our recent episodes about movies and TV, this one is entirely about the related game… because really, who cares about Tom Cruise's attempt to reboot The Mummy? The game, on the other hand, is very much a Retronauts kinda thing, which is why I wanted to talk to its designers. It can be tough to line up interviews with developers who worked on licensed games back in the day — where wo...
2018-03-05 22:04:09 +0000 UTC
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So… it's not actually our intent to turn Retronauts Micro into a series focused exclusively on movies and other properties that inspired games, with sidebar segments on the games themselves. It's just a coincidence that the past few episodes have gone that direction. This week's Micro was going to be an interview with WayForward about the making of The Mummy Demastered (now that it's had some design quirks patched out)… and that was going to focus pretty much exclusively on...
2018-03-02 14:46:02 +0000 UTC
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This isn't strictly a retro topic this week, but it definitely intersects with the things (and some of the games!) we cover on Retronauts. As it happens, my house is just down the highway from the offices of Limited Run Games. So I recently imposed on the guys who run the company — Josh Fairhurst and Douglas Bogart — to allow me to crash their offices and talk for an hour and a half about their efforts to preserve games on physical media — including classics and future classics (a...
2018-02-26 18:11:28 +0000 UTC
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Hello! Celebrate Presidents Day this year with the President of All RPGs (or something like that): Final Fantasy VI. This continues our Final Fantasy deep-dive series featuring Chris Kohler and Kat Bailey, and it is a lovely piece of conversation about a game we all love very much. I have a feeling the Final Fantasy episodes to come after this one will find us, um, much less in sync with our opinions. But for now, enjoy our unity as we reminisce about a great RPG.
De...
2018-02-19 15:55:34 +0000 UTC
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For the fourth time, the Talking Simpsons crew takes over Retronauts to explore the long legacy of Simpsons games. This week, they shine the spotlight on Virtual Bart, which applied the then-burgeoning hype over virtual reality to The Simpsons with mixed results (at best). On this episode of Retronauts Micro, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Chris Antista as they ask the tough questions like "Why is Bart a pig for some reason?" and "Why is Bart a baby for some reason?" Note: none of these que...
2018-02-16 23:42:19 +0000 UTC
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Over the years, we've covered plenty of games based on animated TV shows, from The Simpsons to Tiny Toon Adventures to Animaniacs. But this week's episode of Retronauts focuses on a much rarer specimen: video games based on live-action TV shows. And, given that live-action shows are usually constrained by some sort of mundane reality, they don't always make for the best adaptations. But they're still fun to talk about! On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert,...
2018-02-12 21:33:42 +0000 UTC
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Two interview segments this week. First, for the core of the episode, I invited Aaron Hamel of Ship to Shore Phono Co. to share an inside look at his company's efforts to bring vintage game soundtracks to the U.S. Why focus on obscurities like Metal Black and Pu-Li-Ru-La? How hard is it to talk Japanese corporations into licensing their archival material? Where are the Nintendo reissues? And why are so many publishers bringing game tunes exclusively to vinyl these days, anyway?...
2018-02-05 19:43:12 +0000 UTC
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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the entire reason the word "metroidvania" exists… and yet, it almost seems to have killed the exploratory platformer. It's the one truly notable game of its kind from the late ’90s; indeed, for an entire decade, most works in this style bore the name "Castlevania." So what happened in those years between the Super NES/Genesis and the indie metroidvania boom? That's the question this episode attempts to answer, with the help of a thoughtful mailb...
2018-01-29 14:53:23 +0000 UTC
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Ever since taking Retronauts full-time last year, I've been wanting to venture beyond the realm of purely discussing video games and into other retro media with episodes dedicated primarily to film, television, etc. — without altogether abandoning the video game angle. Usually when we discuss tie-in games, we briefly summarize the property and focus on games; I've been wanting to flip that on its head for media that is more interesting than the games based on it. It's taken a while, but here's...
2018-01-26 15:00:35 +0000 UTC
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By my count, this marks the 250th episode of Retronauts since we relaunched with the Kickstarter campaign in 2013. Fittingly for this milestone in numeration, we have a pretty significant episode… well, for me, at least. I've been trying to pull together a sit-down interview with Shantae director Matt Bozon for years and years, and it finally worked out last month.
Matt was kind enough to invite me down to WayForward's offices in Santa Clarita, where he spoke candidly about th...
2018-01-22 19:41:03 +0000 UTC
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Spider-Man has been starring in video games for 35 years, but outside of a few rare instances, his digital adventures didn't receive much praise before Neversoft brought him into the world of polygons. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Gary Butterfield, and Spider-Man superfan Henry Gilbert as the crew pores over the many, many Spidey games released from 1982 to 2000. Anybody call for a web-slinger?
2018-01-16 21:40:39 +0000 UTC
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Hulu just announced a two-season reboot of the classic '90s 'toon Animaniacs, so there's never been a better time to look back at the many games starring the Warner Brothers and their Warner sister, Dot. On this episode of Retronauts Micro, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Chris Antista as the crew looks back on this wildly popular, smart, and expensive TV series and the many games that tried their best to dive as deep into pop culture references as the source material did.
2018-01-14 00:55:48 +0000 UTC
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Friends! It's another deep dive as Bob and I convene with Kat Bailey and Brett Elston to discuss the greatest Mega Man game of all: Mega Man X. Handily, this coincides with both the series' 30th anniversary and the recent release of the Super NES mini console, so it's double-relevant. Wow!
I hope you enjoy the gimmicky format I used this week. I tried to make it a fun listen, and I have my fingers crossed that it doesn't cross the line into "irritating" by mistake…
2018-01-08 18:30:53 +0000 UTC
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One of my goals with Retronauts for 2017 was to get more interviews with game creators and people in retrogaming into the show's rotation, and I think by and large that mission proved to be a success. One of my goals for 2018, then, will be to figure out ways to make sure these interview segments sound as good as regular episodes — they tend to have great content with iffy audio quality. This episode, for example: The first hour is an interview with Brjann Sigurgeirsson of Image & Form on ...
2018-01-01 20:26:48 +0000 UTC
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Greetings and salutations and please to enjoy this final podcast for 2017! (Unless I manage to pull together Monday's episode a bit in advance.) This one centers on Squaresoft's PS1 fighting games, all five (!) of them. That's really quite a lot for a company focused on RPGs. But you'll find the company's role-playing roots aren't entirely removed here…
Description: Ah, yes, Squaresoft… the company that only made RPGs. Right? Well. During the PlayStation era, the company's output was a...
2017-12-29 12:42:39 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! Christmas may not come early this year, but New Year's does. I wanted to post this coming week's early-access episode even earlier. I know a bunch of you will be traveling today and tomorrow, and I thought you might enjoy listening to the show as you make your journey.
This episode is neatly timed to go public on New Year's Day, and we're ringing in the year 2018 with the revival of an old tradition from the 1UP days of the show: The "years in review." We used to kick off a new ye...
2017-12-23 22:04:17 +0000 UTC
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As another year winds down, it's time to return once again to the Retronauts holiday cabin in Parts Unknown. And for 2017's celebration, we've dug up one of the few remaining video game cartoon Christmas specials left for our annual festive discussion: Donkey Kong Country's "The Kongo Bongo Festival of Lights." So, boil up a boozy batch of bog nog, cozy up by the fire, and listen in as Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, Chris Antista, and Matthew Jay explore the winter solstice customs of hideous CGI ap...
2017-12-22 16:29:42 +0000 UTC
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Ben and Benj and I have put together several episodes on the history of SEGA's innovative and often genre-defining arcade creations, and I had intended to put a bow on the series with this entry before moving along to other arcade greats in 2018. But it turns out SEGA made so many innovative and genre-defining arcade games in the ’90s there was no way to get through them all. So you guys are gonna be stuck hearing about SEGA again sometime…
Also, my apologies for completely blanking on Tyr...
2017-12-18 18:19:23 +0000 UTC
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In a generation where games strove to be gritty, photorealistic, and more "mature," The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker dared to be boldly cartoony, and suffered greatly at the hands of console warriors. Yet, close to 15 years later—and with the help of an HD remake—Link's seafaring GameCube adventure is remembered quite fondly. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Kat Bailey, and Matthew Jay as the crew explores just how this GameCube game went from reviled to trea...
2017-12-12 02:13:33 +0000 UTC
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Hi, it's me again. Since our most recent episode ended up being posted a little late, I thought you might enjoy receiving this one a day early.
This is another live Micro (well, "micro") episode from a convention. The sound quality unfortunately isn't as nice as our Metal Gear panel from Portland, but it's also less terrible than the Long Island Dragon Slayer episode. A middle ground of sorts.
It may sound echoey, but this episode afforded us a rare opportunity: A...
2017-12-07 18:51:02 +0000 UTC
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As promised (!?), this week's advance episode comes in a bit on the late side due to my travel schedule. On the plus side, the balance of this delay is a really great, in-depth episode on the history of Shantae with Matt Bozon that'll go up in a few weeks (as well as a second WayForward episode to follow!). In the meantime, here's an entirely different developer interview: A conversation with Tom Happ and Dan Adelman about the creation and design of Axiom Verge. I've been tryin...
2017-12-06 16:29:36 +0000 UTC
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Hi all, it's Jeremy — just wanted to let you know that this week's advance episode may not go up here until Tuesday. This is a Retronauts recording weekend (you know, when I fly to the west coast and spend the weekend marathoning episodes with Bob and guests) — unlike most, though, it's a THREE day recording weekend, as I'll be hopping on a plane to LA tomorrow first thing to record a couple of episodes with folks at WayForward. Which is cool! But it does mean I won't have any time at my com...
2017-12-03 15:54:59 +0000 UTC
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I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should put an apostrophe in "collectors"…
Anyway, welcome to the latest episode! This was a fun and interesting one to put together, because it was really a free-form conversation without a lot of advance planning — it's a topic all four participants (myself, Bob, Chris Kohler, and Steve Lin) have thought about, lived, and approached from different angles. Plus, the back half of the episode is pretty much us using your letters as a springboar...
2017-11-27 19:04:24 +0000 UTC
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We've given you our semi-expert opinions on Metal Gear plenty of times over the years, so it's about time for all of you Retronauts listeners to hear some EXPERT ones. And who better to offer them than people who worked on the actual games? On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey and Jeremy Parish as they grill Camouflaj's Ryan Payton and James Howell about their work on Hideo Kojima's legendary series. Thanks again to everyone who made it out to PRGE! (We'll see you again next year.)
2017-11-24 16:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Often, our episodes are packed so full of stunning facts and dangerous takes that we rarely have time to give you, the listener, a voice. Hence, our annual listener mail episode: your yearly chance to write in and ask us our semi-expert opinions. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Dave Rudden and Chris Antista as the crew runs down the best Virtual Console releases of 2017, and answers your burningest questions.
2017-11-20 19:38:37 +0000 UTC
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We've mentioned Myst and HyperCard in several episode this year, but it's always within a glancing tangent rather than a real conversion. This week, Ben Elgin and I downshift into first gear to take a proper look at these two interconnected pieces of gaming history: Apple's incredibly flexible hypertext tech, HyperCard, and Cyan's Myst, which took the platform to its ultimate limit and became the best-selling PC game of the 20th century for its trouble. Not bad for something in...
2017-11-13 12:42:54 +0000 UTC
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We're not very good with this whole "Retronauts Micro" thing, huh? They've gone from being about 10 minutes long to about an hour and 10 minutes long — 1:12:00 in this case. I know, it must be dreadful to get more listening material than you originally signed up for. We'll work on this in the future.
Dumb jokes aside, this episode serves as a corollary to last week's Metroidvania episode. I think you'll find it a more focused discussion, as we center our talk entirely around Metroid II
2017-11-10 14:45:38 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! We're back on our regular schedule, and this week we have another patron request episode. This one hits on the early SaGa games — that is, Final Fantasy Legend 1-3 (and their siblings, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy II). Special guest Shane Bettenhausen joins us for this glimpse into the mouth of Akitoshi Kawazu's madness!
Description: By patron request, we continue our Final Fantasy deep dive series by looking at a trilogy o...
2017-11-06 01:10:52 +0000 UTC
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It might not have been a smash-hit back when it released in 1989, but Monster Party went on to be remembered by NES kids as one of the more memorable—if inexplicable—8-bit games. Though the (unreleased) Japanese version set out to be a much more direct parody of horror hits, the extant experience skirts close enough to breaking copyright law to make the whole thing worthwhile. On this episode of Retronauts Micro, join host Bob Mackey and guest Henry Gilbert as the two dig into one of the spo...
2017-11-01 22:04:01 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone, sorry for taking so long to get this episode up. We've been having a weird security issue where Patreon's standard account verification emails haven't been coming through correctly, so we were locked out of this page. That's kinda bad. Fortunately, everything seems to be working properly now. So that's good.
Here's the latest advance episode, a couple of days late — the latest in our ongoing Metroidvania saga. This episode went a bit off the rails from what I had intended, thoug...
2017-11-01 19:31:43 +0000 UTC
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