retronauts

Episode 616: Video Game House Bands

Kevin: When it comes to game music, we live in an age of riches. You can stumble across original soundtracks online, see live performances of covers in just about any genre you can think of, and handily find other performances online. Back in the mid-1980s, however, these soundtracks were just coming into their own, which in turn gave rise to an incredibly curious trend in Japan: the game company house band. These essentially served as a way for companies to promote their own ga...

Episode 615: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

It's taken nearly four years, but it's finally here: part two of Square-Enix's ambitious trilogy of Final Fantasy VII remakes. And guess what? It's HUGE! While Remake proved the viability of a modern Final Fantasy VII reimagining, Rebirth absolutely blows the doors off with an open-world take on this classic RPG. But does this chunk of the original game's disc one make a smooth transition into a 100-hour journey? On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, 2024-05-27 07:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post

This Month In Retronauts: May 2024 edition

Salutations, Retronauts patrons! Diamond Feit here, happy to deliver unto you our monthly community podcast chock full recent releases and news and your feedback. Stuart Gipp is here as well, as the two of us take turns sharing what we've been up to and tease what episodes you can look forward to in the coming months.

I know this happens a lot on our ...

Episode 614: Video Games and the Nuclear Apocalypse

Nadia: "Jesus Christ, they've done it."

This week on Retronauts, Nadia Oxford huddles underground with Jeremy Parish and games journalism sage Jaz Rignall to talk about the best depictions of nuclear devastation in retro video games. The medium came of age through the Cold War, so it's no surprise even the earliest, most primitive games made statements about the plutonium-tipped Sword of Damocles that dangled above us.

We crawl from Missile Command's nightmare-...

This Week In Retro: Minecraft

May 17, 2009: Punch Block…Punch Block

by Diamond Feit

When I started this series of columns looking back at anniversaries, I took inspiration from the Retronauts rule that once a piece of media turns 10 years old, it's fair game for discussi...

Episode 613: Final Fantasy VI (Live from Midwest Gaming Classic 2024)

We intended to get more than a few live recordings in the can at this year's Midwest Gaming Classic. Unfortunately, a family medical emergency (which thankfully had a positive resolution) threw a wrench in our plans, so we only have one panel to post. But it's about Final Fantasy VI, so who could possibly complain? So please take yourself back to April 2024, and join me (Bob), Diamond Feit, and Nadia Oxford for a live recording all about this legendary RPG on the occasion of its 30th annivers...

Episode 612: Documenting Game History from Virtual Boy to J-Rock

Jeremy: This week, I turn to a topic I know quite well: Books about video games. Rather than talk about them myself, though, I speak to a quartet of authors whose work covers an impressive gamut of game history-related topics, from a wide array of perspectives.

First, Benj Edwards and Jose Zagal talk about their new Platform Studies book about Virtual Boy, Seeing Red. As the author ...

This Week In Retro: Shadow Dancer (1989)

May 1989: Sega shadow-drops a Shinobi sequel

by Diamond Feit

When platonically pairing animals and human beings based on personality and presentation, associating ninjas with dogs doesn't make much sense. Both conjure images of f...

Episode 611: The Contra: Operation Galuga Wail

Stu: You thought the Euronauts were done with Contra after that epic Ranking Hootenanny, but no. Not quite. Because there is, as you well know, a new Contra; that being the Contra: Operation Galuga as discussed in episode 584. It seemed… wrong, somehow, not to cover it properly, put it into perspective with the others as discussed with John Linneman and Thomas Nickel, not to mention myself—Stuart Gipp. No, really, there ...

This Week In Retro: Red Dead Revolver

May 3, 2004: Pass the controller, pilgrim

by Diamond Feit

America's fascination with the Old West has never sat right with me. Westerns occupied a huge portion of radio, movies, and television for decades, to the point that directors in other ...

Episode 610: The Dark Age of Fighting Games

Kevin: Hi folks, Kevin Bunch here! This week I’m excited to talk about a topic near and dear to me: fighting game history. Specifically we’re talking about the “doldrums” of the fighting game genre and the fighting game community in the 00s, when Capcom largely dropped out of the scene, SNK hit some serious speedbumps, and the great arcade die-off really made its mark. But this wasn’t to say that there weren’t any new fighting games, as we delve into over the course ...

Episode 609: The State of Emulation

While it started exclusively as an activity enjoyed by a small demographic of ultra-nerdy young people with knowledge of obscure websites, emulation has gradually blossomed over the past thirty years into something we all do regularly—often while obeying copyright laws. Without emulation, most retro games would be entirely inaccessible to all but the select few with the cash available to purchase pieces of decades-old plastic that are only increasing in price and decay. And would our little...

This Month In Retronauts: April 2024 edition

HELLO, Diamond Feit here, delivering our latest community podcast just in time for Golden Week (a string of holidays that mean little to anyone outside Japan). As usual, Stuart Gipp joins the fun to help me rundown recent news, releases, and reading your comments. Listen for tales of my trip to the American Midwest, Stu's golden singing voice, and a brand-...

Episode 608: The Capcom Marvel Universe

Greetings, true believers! Diamond Feit here, back with another podcast about fighting games, Capcom, and superheroes. All three of these elements overlapped 30 years back when the Osaka developer/publisher got Marvel Comics on the phone and the two companies teamed up for a series of exciting arcade titles.

Together with returning voices Kevin Bunch 2024-04-22 11:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

This Week In Retro: Game Boy

April 21, 1989: I'll take pleasure in playin' you, boy

by Diamond Feit

The arrival of the Nintendo Entertainment System in late 1985 did not startle me. I couldn't tell you when I first saw it or played it for myself—I grew up in New York so...

Episode 607: Final Fantasy VI Character Ranking Hootenanny

Final Fantasy VI is 30 years old, and while we discussed this fact during a live show at 2024's Midwest Gaming Classic—stay tuned—we saved the more in-depth conversation for AFTER the panel. In a fairly average-size room, we each consumed approximately one beer and decided to put our knowledge of this legendary RPG and also mental math to the test. This week on Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Nadia Oxford, Diamond Feit and special floor guest Nina Matsumoto as the crew gathers to pit the cas...

Episode 606: Farewell, Akira Toriyama

Ossu! Diamond Feit here, and we've got a special episode for you that, in a Retronauts first, none of us wanted to record. Oh sure, I'd been scheming to dive into the legacy and history of Dragon Ball for a while now, but when the series' creator Akira Toriyama passed away suddenly last month, we knew we had to acknowledge our collective loss.

Since it's April now, the news is not so fresh, but I still think t...

This Week In Retro: Painkiller

April 12, 2004: Pain don't hurt

by Diamond Feit

DOOM changed video games; even if you never played the 1993 original, its arrival shifted the orbit of...

Episode 605: Dragon Quest VIII

Nadia: Dragon Quest VIII for the PlayStation 2 celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and we (that is, Nadia Oxford and Good Vibes Gaming's Derrick Bitner) are beyond pumped to celebrate. All Dragon Quest games are great, but as the eighth installment reminds us, some games are greater than others. Not only did Dragon Quest VIII restore the franchise's bruised reception after the divisive Dragon Quest VII, it also brought the series into a fully 3D envi...

Episode 604: The Hunt for Red October

Jeremy: For some reason, this week appears to be all about Communism, at least for my work. Between this episode and my latest NES Works video, we're partying like it's 1989 and the party takes place in a bare unheated room lit by a single lightbulb in the back side of a brutalist concrete apartment block the size of an airport. And other such clichés.

No theming was intended, though! It's just one of those t...

Episode 603: King's Quest

In the 18 years we've been putting out this little podcast, we've never produced a single episode wholly devoted to classic Sierra games. Well, that sin against listenerkind ends TODAY as we peer back 40 years in the past to discuss the monumentally important adventure game, King's Quest. Originally intended as a means to sell a platform that died shortly after its release, this interactive fairy tale unexpectedly went on to define Sierra and spawn many more Quests over the next decade-plus. ...

This Month In Retronauts: March 2024 edition

What's up patrons, it's your NB Diamond Feit. A lot's going down in April but before that happens, let's bid farewell to March with our monthly community podcast. Stuart Gipp and I run through your comments and feedback, talk about what we've been playing lately, and touch upon recent news.

Fair warning: if you listen to This Month in Retronauts around other pe...