Indie and Retro – Details, episodes & analysis

Pac-Man was made for an audience that had never had games made for them before. Young smelly boys had had their time! There were so many space shooters… what if a game was about a circle with a mouth? Well, that game would launch one of - if not THE - biggest gaming icon of all time into the stratosphere. Hopefully there’s a lot of food up there, because this guy is HUNGRY. Come learn about Pac-Man with us.

games mentioned in this podcast:

RollerDrome

Froggy's Battle

Pikuniku

Edutainment! It’s when you learn and it’s fun! Are you in your adult years and wondering why so many of us played the same handful of educational video games during “computer class” growing up? There’s a reason! Is there still computer class in school? The young people have apps and tablets instead. There are educational apps! Maybe too many.  Join us as we edutain you on a journey through 60 years of video games meant to teach while also being fun to play, and find out what happened to The Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego.

Part 2 of our Sonic podcast is about the marketing and legacy of his first game. Lots of good games are around, but very few had the cultural impact of this little blue hedgehog with attitude. If it wasn’t packaged specifically for the American market and showed people what the 90’s were all about, he may be more of an Alex Kidd today: just another platformer beaten by Mario. While the long-term hasn’t been completely kind to Sonic, there was a time he was on top of the world. How’d he get there? Listen and find out!

Sonic is a fast boy, and - like Blur’s “Song 2” - is exactly what America wanted at the right time, even when it seemed almost too obvious. He made games cool. He brought a speed and a style that had never been seen before. And he was sold to us in exactly the right way. Sonic the Hedgehog changed the course of video games and accomplished his goal (at least for a little while) of defeating Mario. Part 1 of our Sonic podcast discusses his development history and shows you some indie games you might like if you approve of Sonic’s environmentalism themes or just miss playing as Tails while your brother is running around as Sonic.

Dragon Age games take way too long to make, or aren’t given enough time at all. They weren’t supposed to have dragons, or fireballs, or guys with horns. But guess what! It has all of those things, and even the “bad” games in the series have so much to offer.

Join your lovely hosts as we talk about the series that proved hardcore Western RPG’s (with romance, even!) still had an audience, an audience ever eager for more. How retro will Origins be when Dragon Age 4 releases? At least a little more retro than now. These games were never easy to make, but those are the games with the best stories, yeah?

Links to indie games I mentioned:

Unknown Castle 

One Dreamer 

Ocean's Heart 

And now, a word from Nick:

The Famicom Disk System is a weird little thing that only came out in Japan, long before console add-ons like the 32X and Sega CD destroyed all interest in ever trying them again. Would it work? No one knew - it was the video game Wild West of the late 80’s! A few things kept it from ever catching on or releasing overseas, but we recently found one in great condition at a retro game store and we’re here to tell you all about it! It was full of great ideas, but technology just moved too fast...

Indie games I mention:

Tukoni 

Amazing Cultivation Simulator 

I am Dead 

And, yes I did research to see that the Cowboy Bebop fight scene was animated by the same dude. 

Now a word from Nick:

Prince of Persia was made pretty much by one man: movie loving Yale graduate Jordan Mechner. He wasn’t great at animation, so he used rotoscoping. He wasn’t developing for a console with a lot of memory, so his enemies had to be very efficiently programmed. There were a lot of constraints, and he worked around them to make a franchise that - at first - wasn’t that successful. The thing is, it looked so advanced compared to everything else on the market, and it’s now considered a classic. Join us, and also learn about some indie games that you might like even if you don’t care about Prince of Persia even a little bit!

Howard Scott Warshaw’s Atari 2600 game E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is known by many as the worst video game of all time. Was it, though? Or is the truth a little more nuanced? Learn the history behind one of the most infamous games ever created, “a game that Steven Spielberg liked,” according to a quote they should’ve put on the box.

Harmonix didn’t invent the music game, but they did perfect it, so no man could challenge them in the art of rhythm! Games where you just push the buttons on the screen at the right time got very popular, very quickly, and seemed to die just as fast. Rock Band was the peak of this trend, featuring hundreds of dollars of plastic instruments cluttering the closets of nerds everywhere. Where did it come from? Where did it go? What is the story of Rock Band, Joe? Join hosts Nick and Mumbles as we go through the history of one of the biggest money making franchises in history, Rock Band.

SimCity is not a game I've played, but it is a game that helped inspire the stuff I love now! Here's links to all the indie games I mention:

Parkasaurus 

Simmiland 

Game Dev Tycoon 

And a word from Nick: