Retronauts - 500: Retronauts Host Roundtable

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Here's a shocking fact for you: Since we started this crazy ride back in 2013, we've released 500 full-length podcasts. (And a whole bunch of other stuff on top of that.) It's been quite a wild ride since we started our independent run, and we've had our share of ups, downs, and global pandemics over the last near decade. So instead of turning the spotlight on a video game topic, on this very special episode, it's time to learn a little something about... ourselves. Now take a seat with Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, Diamond Feit, and Nadia Oxford as we discuss the past, present, and future of the little retro gaming podcast that simply can't be stopped. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, only 500 more to go. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts, the 500th episode, and I'm your host this one, Bob Mackie, and today we'll be talking about ourselves because this is a little something I'm calling the Retronauts Host Roundtable, and today all of the hosts will be responding to your questions and comments about the last 500 episodes and the future. And because we all live in nightmarishly different time zones, it will be happening in different segments. So that's just what we're working with here. Before I go any further in the celebration of our great podcast, who is here with me today, who is on the East Coast, the godfather of Retronauts, the North Carolina

a crusher who is uh who is on the line today uh yeah hi it's jeremy parish when they talk about the precursor legacy that's me uh and you have quite a collection of orbs behind you i can see we're all on camera oh right yes yes yes that game is all about orbs never actually played it but i think steward is a big fan yeah i just did it we just did an episode about it in fact it's very very timely yeah hello i'm i'm steward jip i'm the retronaut's mascot that's true he's wearing his alec kid uh outfit now even though he's off camera i can tell just by the way he's close I thought that was Goku. Never mind. They're questionably similar in some ways.

The courts can decide. It was a Goku suit that I repurposed. Perfect. It's very easy to do with some tailoring. But yes, so last year we had our 15th anniversary. This year, we're having our 500th episode anniversary. And even though our 10th anniversary for the independent run is coming up next year, I promise we won't do another one for a while. But this is quite a milestone.

we've done 500 main episodes but if you want to do some fun math I check out the free feed just to see like how much we've released and there are 627 releases on the free feed thanks to the micro and pocket episodes we've put out so technically this is like the 629th or so episode and then if you count the one-up episodes we did in the past

that we don't own anymore there's about 800-ish episodes of retronauts so all math is a lie but what we're telling you now is that this is our 500th main episode. So I'm just putting that out there right now. And more scary retronauts facts, I just want to say up front just for Jeremy and Stuart to react to, is that I looked at how much audio this would entail, just how many hours of things we've recorded.

Now, it's a bit of a cheat because if you go to the free feed and you scroll the way to the bottom, it says like how many hours of audio are on that feed. But because some of those podcasts for the last three years are just previews of longer podcasts, you have to figure out how that adds into it. even with just the free previews it's 724 hours of audio so if you were to sit down and listen to every independent retronauts we produce so far

and we recommend you do this it would take you a little over a month and then if you actually listen to all that and the extended exclusive episodes on the Patreon feed probably looking at like 35 or 36 days total so that's what this 10 years has

amounted to that's what this 500 episode count has amounted to so far that's a lot of us that explains all the parisocial relationships we've been developing. Yes, and they're keeping us alive with those fake friendships. Right. If you were to produce and print out the transcripts of every episode of Rhetronauts, cut out each line of dialogue and connect them together in a long horizontal strip,

it would reach from the earth to the moon and back 40 times. And we're waiting for people to do this because we need the Retronauts podcast to be part of the Library of Congress, not the recording, but the transcripts. Stuart, what font size would that have to be? 14 Error Okay so for the The heart of sight people

That's me Visually impaired Well you've got to be able to see it from space right Right I want to It should be the great wall of podcast basically Now Jeremy you're mentioning our parosocial relationships One thing that I was disappointing to me

Is that despite how much we've done Nobody has made a wiki for us so far And I've had to do all this work myself So I'm putting that on you, the fans We need a wiki We've been around too long to not have one Our podcast should be on IMDB There are our podcasts on IMDB

But ours is not So I'm just putting that out there Submit us to that We need our own Wikipedia page I think we should be more notable And I think we are still verified on Twitter Is that true? Yes, I believe so

And if you click it says it's because we're notable Not because we paid $8. So that's good Can I add We also need a TV tropes page Because I'd like to read it and become infuriated with the nonsense written on there. Thank you.

Yes, TV tropes entry, wiki feet. If you can find pictures of our feet, they're somewhere out there. But, yeah, I'm just telling the fans out there. We need more documentation because I shouldn't have to do this on my own. Some more scary facts for everyone out there. We launched our Kickstarter, Tribute Retronauts. A little after a month after one-up shut down,

and that was on March 22nd, 2013. We couldn't go on Patreon because Patreon would not exist until that May. So that was a failing of Patreon. But that means we're coming very close to the 10th anniversary of the Kickstarter, like I said before. And by the time this goes live and maybe Jeremy can do the math on this one, I believe this run of Retronauts will have lasted longer than OneUp.com had ever lasted. Yeah, OneUp launched in October 2013 and was suffocated in the crib in, let's see, it was February 2013. February.

So, yeah, that is about, it's just shy of nine and a half years, and we've been doing this for longer than that. Yeah, I think. Yeah, as of now. Yeah, we just slapped one up. So I hope you're all clutching yourself in fear right now as time. It's fools of us all, as Philip J. Fry said. I think now is the time for us to be acquired by an uncaring media conglomerate that will lay everyone off, keep one person around before shutting the site down. Well, because we're all in charge.

will be the ones who make out big on this one. That's true. For once. For once. For once. For once. So yes. The Saudis, hey, you know,

offers out there, please, you know, I can use a few billion. I could start another podcast with better microphones. Who knows what can happen there? Finally,

my dream of talking family guy will come to pass. Yes, only evil blood money can fund that podcast. That's the only way it can come about. Before we move on, on, though. I do want to talk to Stuart, because Stuart, I feel like people know about me and Jeremy

probably too much at this point after like 15 years of the podcast with Jeremy and like 12 years with me. Stuart, who are you? And how did you end up on retronauts in case people aren't aware? Oh, okay. I'm Stuart. Hi, I'm Stuart. Hello. I used to write about video games for websites such as GameCola, which was a very like indie free, like newsletter thing that turned into a website. But more importantly, I then went on the message board that was at the time connected with GameSpite. And I used to post videos that I made on there, which were these silly magazine shows called Video World. I realized retrospectively that it was almost the same exact name as, like, Game Boy World or like some of Jeremy's other stuff. And that wasn't a conscious report.

I never took that to be a connection there. Okay, that's good. That's good. and then I mean I'm not 100% exactly on what sort of led to the decision but it was on my birthday a few years ago I got a message a DM from Jeremy at quite late like 1am sort of saying like hey you want to write something like for retronauts because like yeah cool of course I want to do that and then I just kind of kept doing that and then started doing that more often and ended up doing about sort of three things a week and at the time I was thinking like the goal here is I'd like to be on podcast. That would be good for me, I think. I would like, I would enjoy doing that and it

would also be nice, kind of, I hate using this term, but it would also be a decent sort of exposure. It would help me get other work, you know? And then like now, so now I've done that like two million times and I'm bored of it. And now I'm fully exposed and I apologize. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right. I've been laid bare in front of the retrogaming community and they don't like what they see. Well, Sue, I have to say, you've exposed our listeners to, you know, topics that Jeremy and I, you know, aren't as familiar with, I think. And also, you've exposed our listeners to what I would call weapons-grade opinions. Well, I try not to do that on retronauts because I keep getting yelled at on Twitter for saying, like, what I believe to be, like, completely unobjectionable things.

Like Sonic Heroes is terrible. It's awful. It's clearly awful. it's not that controversial I think we need to be shell-shocked occasionally by these opinions because I think I don't know if it was your first episode Stuart but I remember the one episode where

I really took notice of you it was Alex Kid and I think about 50 minutes into the podcast you're like well actually I don't like Alex Kid that much and I think the games are bad so I was like okay I understand Stewart now it's like a I don't know I'd like being reasonable like a lot of the stuff

that I like by conventional standards and the standards that have been established by the very kind of US-centric retro gaming community. I think that's fair to say. A lot of things like that get like dismissed. And I can say by those standards, yeah, those aren't great games compared to something like, say, Super Mario Brothers, obviously. I mean, that would be in a Mario 3, for example. I mean, that's like leagues of everything else.

But I didn't have Mario 3. I had trapdoor and through the trapdoor and Jet Set Willie and Castle of Illusion and Alex Kidd and nothing else. so I had to like these games so I have ended up enjoying them and I try and bring that sort of sensibility to the episodes that I've ended up hosting because at first I was doing I did like Halo and I did like Lego games

and I did enjoy doing those but I was quite nervous about it because it was more of a kind of these aren't 100% my wheelhouse but when I started doing stuff like Dizzy and Leavings I was just like okay here we go I can fully get stuck into this because that's my that's kind of my zone

It was important for me to bring you on to the show once you, you know, I realize like, hey, this guy can hold his own. Because for the longest time, I just approached this as, hey, we're Americans making this show. We're talking, you know, really to other Americans. And, you know, I'm sure there's the equivalent for Australians out there and Europeans and Britons and so forth. But it kind of turns out that there's not. And so at some point, I realized people were just kind of looking to this show and some other U.S.-based productions as sort of representative of the retro gaming community in general. And that was never my intention for retronauts. It's just like, hey, here's kind of our perspectives and our points of view.

So, you know, having a wildly different set of formative experiences to speak to, to approach things from, I guess, you know, helps us expand that circle of what we're able to present as the past and as, you know, just as thoughts in a way that we couldn't be for. So thanks for at least making a few people stop complaining at us. That was worth it. Yeah, now they complain about other stuff like me not explaining what Lemmings is and stuff like that, but that's okay. I'll do another episode just to explain what Lemmings is sometime. Yeah, now, I mean, with, with, Benj and Stuart, no one's mad at me anymore

and it's great, so thank you, Stuart. I'm mad at you because you didn't let me do the Adams family. I apologize, but... Four and a half hour-long episode of me just rambling on and on how good it is. I think you will be on my Donkey Kong Country episode coming later this year, early next year. I forget when. So open invitation, Stuart.

That's very kind, thank you. I would like to do that. You can come on the Dangan Rompere episode as well. Ooh, I'm there. I'm there already in the future. The holidays have arrived, which means your favorite podcaster, end up trying to stick to their release schedules while also entertaining guests from out of town. A few weeks ago, my parents came to visit for a couple of weeks, and it was a huge relief to have recently received a gift box from Omaha Steaks.

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to get that extra $30 off your order. Minimum order may be required. So, yeah, I just want to let people know who Stewart is and welcome them on the show, he's been here for a while just uh this this was the steward's spotlight because i think he's been doing great stuff and obviously uh he grew up in a different uh part of the world with different experiences and even though we could uh study those games he kind of had a foot in the door already and had the advantage with those topics so thank you stewart for uh doing these topics so we don't have i just can i just add a random bit of trivia which i find quite funny um sure so

my american comment as i've read seem to quite like me they're quite nice to me the people on like reset era, for example, it's just like, oh, this is Stuart episode, hooray, it's Stu, and I'm like, great. And on the British forum that I go on, they don't know it's me, and they're just like, there's this British guy on Retronauts now, and he's just awful. And I'm like, what?

Okay, so that really is, you're having the true experience there, because you know, in the early days of Retronauts, I'd go on to American forums, and they'd be like, wow, Jeremy Parrish is a dumb sack of crap. He doesn't know anything. Yeah, okay, good times. I think, Stuart, to close out,

I think the accent really makes people immediately think you're smart in America and then they're on board with anything you say because we don't hear these accents outside of like television the smart people have them so I think that that's the bias there but you do say smart things also so that helps oh thank you yeah smart people and villains terrible villains well villains have more of the received pronunciation it's much more you know like that formal style of speech so you're one of the good ones you're not you're not all doing the queen's imperial English thing you're of the people.

So I want to continue by going over some questions. So I want to continue by going over some questions. So some of our great patrons of love questions, some people on our Discord of love questions. Up front, I have some generic questions for the hosts that I want to go over, just, you know, our history with the show, ups and downs and so on. And I want to know from both of you, Stuart doesn't have quite as many as Jeremy and I, but I'm just curious, and I'll give my answers after you guys. What were your favorite episodes you put together in the last 500 or 628 or whatever, and why? Which ones are you the most proud of?

You know, I spent some time thinking about this question after reading through the questions in advance. And honestly, I can't come up with any one thing that stands out. And I think that's because I don't really go back and dwell on things I've created aside from to say, how could I do better at this? So I don't know. My tendency is just to look forward to the next thing I'm doing and think about ways to improve on what I've done before. So I don't know that I necessarily have any one episode where I'm like, like, oh, that was great times. I mean, there have been definitely some fun ones, like the Pokemon Generation 1 roundtable that we did, I thought was a lot of fun and really brought out a lot of people's real experiences and opinions in a way that even though I didn't have those experiences and opinions, it was just great to kind of sit there and pull those out.

But, yeah, for the most part, my favorite episodes of Retronauts are the ones I haven't made yet because I think about how good I want them to be and how good they can be and always strive for that. that sounds kind of corny now that I say it out loud sorry no it's okay I mean that is really corny the question is more you know I'm not just like I'm proud of this this like product I made I'm proud of this like a thing I created it's like the experience counts too like the experience of recording it like a good time recording it uh things like that too so that can factor into it

as well okay well I had a great time going to uh Nagoya and recording at critical hit Alex Frioli's bar and recording a dragon quest segment with him with him that was a lot of fun That was great, and I saw you, I think, beat Castleveen, no, no, sorry, Mega Man 2 half drunk. To be fair, we are both half drunk. I think I was mostly drunk, but it was a fun experience. Stuart, how about you, favorite episode so far? I really enjoyed doing the Mario 2D ranking Houthanani because it was just a good excuse to give my genuine Mario opinions and just cause widespread disgust amongst the people and therefore definitively rank the Mario

games in the way that I pleased. That made me happy. I enjoyed doing that very much because there was a lot of laughter, you know, just very pleasant amount of laughter and it was all very nice and informal. I also enjoyed doing the Atari 50 episode that's coming up.

I spoke to do this to the clips and did a little interview with them and I think it came out really well. It's not out yet, but I think people are going to like it. So that's a bit of a cheat answer. I apologize. I've enjoyed having the opportunity to speak to like the Shreda's Revenge developers

and other such individuals. I enjoyed doing the Zool episode because that was my first like big time sort of I guess kind of off the Retronauts Grid episode in a sense because it was a subject that I don't think otherwise would ever probably have been reached except in a really sort of scolding terrible British game mascots episode

kind of way. So I was glad I got to go there and go like it's middling to good. it's fine so that was fun and bringing in you know guesting with Dave Ballmer is always fun because we bounce off each other so

ridiculously well I mean I've enjoyed doing all of them I guess it's a lay answer I know but there are so many that I enjoyed like I enjoyed doing Halo a lot that was the first time that was when I felt actually kind of like I was doing an okay job of hosting it when we had John on and with you Jeremy

that was a lot of fun I enjoyed doing Bill and Ted because this is not me trying to to you up, Bob, but it was just really surreal for me because I'd been listening to talking Simpsons and what a cartoon for like years before then. So it was extremely odd to be on a podcast with you, with you, Anne Henry. But yeah, tons of, tons of great times, to be honest. I've enjoyed doing it all. Now that you bring up interviews, I did really enjoy the

brief period of time where Retronauts was my main focus, and I could briefly make a living off doing that. Because I got to go out and interview a bunch of developers that I wouldn't really have time to set up and pursue otherwise. There was a great episode with Robert Woodhead, one of the co-creators of wizardry that I thought turned out really well. And it's, in hindsight, just a huge honor for me to have been able to have interviewed Rieko Kodama before she passed. I had no idea, you know, that that was on kind of a timer. So with her recent passing, I just feel very grateful for the opportunity to have been able to meet with her and to talk with her a little bit about Sega's history and get that onto the show. Yeah, for me, I think

mine are mostly related to the experiences I had recording them. And I am proud of like how they came out, but a few that I remember very well. And I spent about half an hour last night going over the huge list of episodes on audio boom. But early on, I think maybe 2015, we had Ron Gilbert in for a recording on Monkey Island. And that was like right before he left the Bay Area. So we got him in person and it was great. I had him on a podcast before it won up, but this is different. And yeah, I really enjoyed talking with him. And this is before, like, Thimble Wee Park, obviously, before return to Monkey Island. So it was great to talk to him about adventure games before he really got back into making them in the traditional sense again. Also, a few more that I was a fan of

the Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, because I'm pretty sure we have the only podcast ever about that game. It was a very fun recording at Magfest with Jeremy. It was a Chris. Sims also on that one. I'm sorry, I should look. And my wife, Nina, my future wife, Nina Matsumona, that was the first one that she was on with us. And it was a great time. And we were also a little tipsy from a boo soaked lunch. So it was fun to talk about cucumber people, tomato princesses. Also, like, some of my memories are from not so great times. Some of the episodes I had fun with. One set of them was the Back to the Future trilogy set of episodes because most of them happened during the pandemic. And, It was just so much fun to dig into my favorite movies, like pour over every possible detail about them while the world was falling apart and things were uncertain and I was very lonely. So I really enjoy making those. I'm very proud of how those came out and those are my favorite movies. So I'm happy that I could do a podcast about each one. And I think my favorite one I've done so far is my Christmas episode on the Pokemon Christmas Bash album.

Because I love the holiday episodes. My favorite ones of the year, they take the most work. the sketches take a long time to do and edit and everything like that. But I was not expecting to have that much fun with a total cash in holiday album, and I've been chasing that high for the past three years. So that's why I've done the other Pokemon albums. I just want to go back to the fun that we had talking about the Pokemon Christmas album. So if I could recommend one, that's my absolute favorite.

It's that one for sure. And another question I have for you, folks, is that in the past, we've revisited topics because, you know, we either didn't have time or new information came out. What topics would you like to revisit? For any reason, maybe you're not happy with how it turned out. Maybe, again, more research came out. Maybe you have more time now to look into it. Anybody wants to go.

I've got my own choices here, but anything you'd like to revisit. Stuart, this might be harder for you because you kind of just started compared to Jeremy and I. I mean, I'd like to do some sonic stuff because I feel like my opinion of that series is probably a lot more positive than I've heard expressed on retronauts. And I think it might be nice to get some deeps, the kind of deep dives going that are more

inclined to be positive. That's not an attack, obviously, on the previously expressed opinions. It's just that I don't know, I think it might be fun to do some really, like, intense Sonic episodes. But at the same time, I kind of hate Sonic now, so I'm not sure I want to do it anymore.

No, I agree. I put Sonic Frontiers, and I was just like, completely like, nope. Stuart, I totally agree with you because I think in the earlier years of this independent run we suffer from what I call one-up syndrome where it's like, okay, we're doing an episode about this series, let's talk about every game because that was what we did at one-up because it's like the doors are closing on one-up, things are being taken away from us, we have to get this podcast out now, I need to give you all my opinions on this subject, but now we're safe, we're funded, we can take as long as we want with games,

and now we can do individual episodes about individual games, and I think, yeah, an episode per Sonic game would be amazing for Retronauts. the only other thing I'd like to redo within my sort of air quotes podcast lifetime here I felt like the sonic comic episode while it was entertaining I feel like it may have been I think me and Dave talked over the guest too much so I feel quite bad about that so I apologize if you're listening uh Jeremy anything you want to revisit from the past uh I mean anything involving things like Atari history Sega history I've spent a lot of time over the past few years really trying to more to better familiarize myself with those

those kind of areas of video game history and um you know my strength was previously with nintendo sony um you know Microsoft since it was kind of a latecomer um so those those kind of big gaps in the things we saw you know here in the u.s that's that's some of the material i'd like to revisit and you know also there are a few episodes where we've done in the one-up days, especially the sort of brief summary of a series that deserve revisiting in greater depth. And in addition to the time crunch that you mentioned on those, Bob, also the fact that Wikipedia and Wikia and things like that didn't really exist yet when we were making those early episodes. So just pulling together that information and saying, you know,

here's kind of like a central repository of conversation about these games. There was value in that because you couldn't just go find like you know list of sonic games list of mario games that just that stuff didn't really exist outside of a handful of fan sites so you know for the time those were the right episodes to make but you know we've been around long enough that just the nature of information that's available online and the way information is handled and presented has totally changed i mean there were no angry video nerds video game nerds when we started Retronauts in 2006. So, you know, the discourse and the availability of information has really, I would say, improved, even if you don't necessarily like what everyone's saying.

There's just a lot more conversation about retro games. So it gives us more of an opportunity to, and really more of an obligation to lean in and really try to dig deep into things. And there's, there's a lot of topics, honestly, more than I could possibly begin to name here that deserve greater, deeper, more substantial looks. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've done a few of those cram every game into an episode topics, like,

with Resident Evil and Sonic the Hedgehog, where I feel that, well, I guess there was value back then, but now it's like there's more value in talking about as many things you can as you can about one specific game. And yeah, like a few ones that I'd like to revisit are maybe a few of the topics I did for

Retronaut's Micro. And in case you don't know what that is. They were kind of like little essays that Jeremy and I would do just without any other guest and like I did one about Majora's mask and I definitely want to make that into a full episode because I believe I did that one before the 3DS remake remake came out and we still are lacking a full length Majors Mask episode and other topics I've done that are a little more broad I think I can revisit like I did a cancel games episode I did a gaming's greatest flops episode I feel like in the 78 years since I've done those a lot more things have happened I didn't cover some stuff in the original episodes and yeah I just

feel like there is more, there's lots of room to revisit topics, although I have a lot of new things in mind for my episodes for the future. We're going to move on to the final question in our generic questions, just so we can cover some of the fan questions because we are short on time here. And I want to know from both of you, what personal favorite topics haven't you covered yet that you really want to, even if you don't have the time necessarily? So we're not telling listeners, these are coming. We're saying, like, if you could make an episode and you had like a limited time what would you make it and especially if something you haven't covered yet

so my list goes on for a long time and I'll just name a few because if you can see the retronaut schedule and you shouldn't because only a few people have access you can see that certain topics of mine keep getting moved down the schedule because I don't really have time to cover them some of them have been

and I can say like safely these will probably be coming in the future because I really want to do them Mother 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 the Mario Luigi RPG series, a Paper Mario series, a Monster Hunter, games from the UK developer

Bullfrog. That has been something on the two make episode list since like 2013. And I really would like to do an episode all about the hot coffee scandal, but I want to make sure I have the time to do all my research because I know no matter what I do, I'm going to make people

mad with that episode, and I want to make sure that I'm not making them mad for the wrong reason. So those are all of mine. I know Jeremy, you jumped in some ideas of your own. Yeah, actually, I've been meaning to do a mass effect episode for years. There's no reason that I haven't. It should have been this year, the 15th anniversary, but it wasn't. So that needs to happen next year. And I feel like Assassin's Creed, although it has some reasonable highs and some very gross lows. It's still a big enough franchise that it needs

to be discussed. And that also turned 15 this year. And I know exactly the people to have on it, too. So those, I think, need to come in 20, 23 for sure. I think Mike Williams just contract him to produce these. I think the challenge there would be preventing Mike from just taking over the show and saying, all right, everyone, Retro-Nazes now the Assassin's Creed podcast. I'm Mike Williams, your host. Jeremy's dead. We could take the month off or probably like six months off with the amount of Assassin

Creed games there have been. Yep. I want to do Duke Newcomb because Duke Newcomb's controversial character, who I feel personally has been slightly ruined. He was obviously never a model of civility, but Duke and you can forever really hurt that guy. So I wouldn't mind doing him justice at some point on a podcast because I am quite a big fan of that series

for all its problematic sort of tendencies. I really want to do Dangan Rompra, as I've mentioned already, but I've been trying to think what the best approach would be, whether to do all three main games or just do the first one, one, because there's a lot to talk about. Oh, yeah. Plus, I'd have to replay them, and they're, like, hours and hours long. So that's probably the main obstacle.

But, yeah, mostly, as I already mentioned, I want to do some Sonic Deep Dives. I'd like to do more UK stuff. I'd like to do more Amigo and Spectrum stuff. I'd like to do maybe an episode built around sort of interviews and things. It's more almost like a sort of, I don't know what, I guess, I was about to say what would you call an audio documentary, but I guess podcast is the answer to that, isn't it? But I'd like to do something about the UK. games print scene like magazine scene because it's so

interesting and insane and not really represented it and it would be nice to do a little condensed maybe slow 90 minute like I don't know what pressy is that the word of that whole thing that would be fun but I'd like to do more interviews I'd like to do more just deeper dive episodes really and now we're all on the hook for all of these ideas just to let our listeners know these are all promises from us to you I think I only said two things So let's move on to

So let's move on to questions from patrons. And I'm going to skip around here because we have to questions from patrons. I'm going to skip around here because we have about like 15, 20 minutes left in this segment. So I'll start with Daniel, who says, for all of you, since the main focus of the podcast is retro games, and you guys project a certain passion, love, and nostalgia for retro games, how has the podcast affected your perception of modern games? Has your interest, if any, for modern games declined? And if so, what's your cutoff date or generation? Thanks for the years of entertainment.

Cheers to many more. And that is from Daniel. I have my own answer for this. Does anyone have anything to say up front about this question? The newest console I own is a Nintendo Switch. That probably answers your question right there. Not a PS5? Nope.

I have a PS5 when I beat you regret buying it. I never used it. It was a complete waste of money. Hey, same here. Sitting there, taking up infinite amounts of space, just doing nothing. Every so often I want to play Horizon on something, so I boot it up and I just get annoyed and turn it off and put Mega Man on. I do want to go back to what Daniel said.

the question of, like, how has the podcast affected your perception of modern games? And I think that's a great little question there. Because for me, doing this podcast for the past 12 years has opened me up to new experiences, I think, in terms of gaming where when I started doing this in the early 2010s, I was like, well, I only like these kind of games. And now having to play a variety of games for retronauts has opened me up to a variety of games for modern platforms. And I really love any kind of new experience.

Like if you tell me there's a fishing game that's also a battle royale game, I'm there, I want to try it. So I feel like this podcast has really opened me up to those new experiences which feed into my current gaming life. And I have every platform, I just got a Steam deck, I have got virtual reality, I do it all, but I still make time for retro games. Stuart, how about you? I know you said you don't touch your PS5, but how does the podcast affected your love of modern games? I don't know how much the podcast has done it. I guess having more of a excuse to really pour some sort of passion into these games does mean that it's turned me back to them to some extent.

Like, whenever an episode comes up that's something to do with properly old, like Game Boy or NES or something, I find that very enthusiastic about that. But going back to something like the Jack and Dexter series, which I did recently, did get me emulating those games, and I ended up playing through all of them, and ended up playing through more PlayStation 2 stuff I haven't touched since I had a PlayStation 2. So it does influence me in that respect, but I just know that in general, eventually I'm going to become so like insular that anything beyond like a Tiger electronic game

kind of LCD thing is just going to be too much for me. Stay tuned for Stewart's Cup and Ball podcast coming in about 10 years. All my podcasts are Cup and Ball podcasts, Bob. It needs to be an entire series, I think. moving on i do want to cover this next question so uh darth yoshi boy says uh my brother got me into retronauts a long while back and i've been a patron since 2018 he was always my player two for at least two decades even when i played single player games he was there to balance ideas off of and help keep track of things he passed back in 2019 from cancer but retronauts reminds me of him every week and fills the whole his passing left when we get together and reminisce about games i'm curious if there was anyone special in your life who was long for the ride when you discovered video games who made playing games special for you. Are they still around? And what games do you really remember enjoying because they were there? I have my own answer for this because I cheated and did homework up front. But anyone else want to jump in on this question? A person in your life that was there

when you discovered video games? Are they still playing games? What happened to them? Anyone want to jump in? I mean, my oldest friend Matt, I still play games with sometimes. And I met him and I was in, like, second grade, I guess is what you'd call it. And we're still playing the couch co-op. We're still playing NES Open Tournament Golf and stuff like that. So, yeah, they've always been around. And I don't play games that have co-op by myself because I know they're going to be around at some point

and then they're going to get played. So I end up missing loads and loads of games because I don't see them as much as I'd like to. But, yeah, I mean, other than that, there's my uncle, but I'm not going to get into that because I'd get upset. So look out. for the upcoming book, all games are going

to do much of the story. Sorry, I've turned your genuinely heartfelt question into a plug. It's okay. I mean, I have one because, maybe listeners I've heard this before, but my mom had a boyfriend

in 1990, they got married in 91, and she was trying to win me over with this new guy saying, oh, he plays Nintendo like you. And so when I met him, I thought he was the coolest guy ever because, A, he lived in his mom's basement, B, the walls of his room

and his mom's basement were just lined with fantasy novels, and C, he had a ton of Nintendo games, mostly RPGs. And I had tinkered with RPGs at that point, the whatever ones were around like pre-90 on the NES, but he had basically everyone that existed. And it's because of him, my stepdad, that I got really into RPGs and fantasy stuff too.

And I remember I got into Final Fantasy in a big way because we rented Final Fantasy 2 slash 4. It was called 2 back in the day. And every day after work, he played a little and I would watch him. and by watching him play through the whole game I got the confidence to actually play through it by myself but I was just like attached to the screen watching the story

watching the battles it was a very memorable experience for me and you continue playing fantasy games once we got a PC he branched off into that area but once he started with EverQuest in 1999 and it's my fault because I got it for him that's basically all he has played

for the past let's say what 23 years so yeah whenever I go home to visit which isn't that often anymore there is the computer room which used to be my room which is what happens when you leave the house and there are two monitors and on one there is always at least one instance of i request one or two running and it's i brought that poison to his life but hey he poisoned me first by making me a bigger nerd and that's my answer uh jeremy anyone in your life um yeah no video games were always something that i kind of enjoyed more than just about anyone i knew um they weren't cool

back then. But I did have a good friend in junior high and high school. And eventually he got really into NES stuff and was one of those guys who somehow seemed to accumulate a whole lot of games and always seemed to be kind of on the cutting edge of interesting taste. He played a lot of computer games, played a lot of RPGs. He was the only person I know who studied Japanese in high school. So he seemed kind of like the quintessential nerd. And, yeah, we hung on a lot, spent a lot of time playing games together, would go over to each other's houses and, you know, anything that I couldn't beat, he could beat, and vice versa.

So it was, you know, a good enriching experience. I've tried reconnecting with him a few times as an adult and it hasn't gone anywhere, like, you know, through LinkedIn or whatever, Facebook. And I just kind of assume, based on, you know, my family, that anyone I've left behind in West Texas at this point is pretty much brain poisoned by QAnon. So probably that connection is probably not going to be reestablished. It's probably just as well.

But it is kind of a bummer because, you know, I'd like to catch up and say, hey, remember all that stuff that we used to do hanging out together? Like now I make books about it in podcasts and videos. It's great. But, oh, well. I say keep your memories and don't ask him about the plan because you'll have a lot to say about it. Never mentioned pizza.

Exactly. Yeah. Or Gates or cheese pizza. particular. Don't mention gates to gamers in general. Exactly. Moving on, Eddie says, what was the hardest episode to put together and or which episode had the longest gestation period from conception to actually happening? And for me, I have a really good example for my own personal life. And it was the Escape from Monkey Island episode because for whatever reason, in the worst parts of the pandemic, I covered the worst

adventure games, I think just to feel something. Even if it was, was like pain. It was a feeling I could have. So it was an awful game. I made my poor then-fiance no wife play it. We podcasted about it for two hours and that is one of the crankiest podcast I think we've ever put out on Retronauts. We both suffered together. So I guess that was a nice moment of bonding for us. But boy, I just remember just being on my couch, playing that game and just feeling miserable. And also I have very, very distinct memories of also playing another bad adventure game during the first weeks of the pandemic and that's when I put out my Zach McCracken podcast

so whatever I was feeling at the time it made me want to play these bad adventure games I guess just like if I'm already feeling bad I might as well get these bad adventure games off my plate for my LucasArts series so that is my answer for that hardest episode to put together

Not a fan of monkey combat there bomb that is actually not the worst part of that game but please listen to the two hour podcast we put together if you want to know over it yes for me it's actually episodes that haven't happened yet because that's how difficult they are. We've had patron requests for a couple of topics including sin and punishment on the books for quite a while. And that one in particular, there have been several attempts to record, but various illnesses such as COVID got in the way

of those sessions and it keeps getting pushed. So that's a bummer. Also, Magame Tensei, I really want to talk about those early games, but I need to actually sit down and play those early games. And, you know, 8-bit dungeon crawler RPGs, that's a lot. So I just need to find the gumption to sit down and do those. But, you know, I've got the panel together for it. I just need to get more experience for myself. So, yeah, there's a lot that's kind of in limbo right now either. And, you know, it either hasn't happened because I don't have quite enough knowledge yet

or just the logistics have been really wild in the time of pandemics. I have a terrible habit of having episodes lined up and then swapping them around on the schedule because something will come up to stop it. Like I've got an episode about rip-offs that I want to do and that's been on the back burner for such a long time. The art's been done for like over a year. It just needs to be recorded.

It needs to be done and for some reason it's just not happening every time I try. But other than that, would it be humorous to say the Duke Newcomb episode? It's just a humorous Duke and Forever joke because there's no basis in reality whatsoever. I don't know. No, I want to nominate myself to be on it

because I think people forget that Duke Nukem 3D is actually a very good game. And in general, I do want to say that there was a two-year period, almost exactly a two-year period in which I was working a full-time job and doing two weekly podcasts on top of that, and I don't know how I was able to do it

other than that I was very unhappy. So that was not a fun time to make podcast. And I have seen a few tweets that have said, like, oh, everyone seems a lot happier on retronauts for the past few years. And I take that to heart, like, okay. So there is like, 2015 to 2017, the podcast from my end probably got a bit crankier or more negative. So I'm happier to be in a better place now with more time to work on podcasts as a full-time podcaster. I'm in the same boat. Like I don't have as much time now because I have full-time work with limited run games. But just as a career, that's so much better and more satisfying than where I had been before that, yeah, I just feel. better about life in general. I think we're all a lot happier than in the past, at least I hope. So moving on, this is career-based.

So segwaying from our last question here, Wood Duck says, what advice would both of you have for your younger, in their 20s listeners, specifically in relation to how your own careers have progressed? It's very interesting hearing what jobs you had and why or how you moved on. I understand

the internet landscape has moved on since the game website era of the Nazis, but surely you will say just have some wisdom to glean for the youngens who might want to write or produce for a living and uh yes wood duck has a very good question and uh actually uh i get this pretty often and i have i have like a a pre-baked thought that i tell people about this but before i go on uh steward or jeremy any thoughts on making it in the world of video game writing or podcasting or just media in general just do it for free for like 15 years and then maybe someone will give you

some work. I don't know. Pure blind luck. Get a real job. Sainsprees or something. That's a lot of it. I will add Stewart, do it for free for yourself. Don't do it for free for other people. Because yes, you will have to build up a, you know, some work and you will be doing a lot of that for free, but don't do that for free if someone else is profiting from it. That should be rule number one. Jeremy, any thoughts on this? Yeah, you know, I was going to say that the circumstances and the world that landed me here no longer exist and they were very specific to the late 90s and early 2000s. But I actually kind of feel maybe things have sort of come full circle because really, you know, to kind of build on what Stewart said, what I did before

starting professionally was just to write stuff about video games. And, you know, I would contribute to other sites occasionally like the Gaming Intelligence Agency. see, but really what I did was I just had my own website and I wrote stuff there and just kept writing and it wasn't always very good, but I did it daily. And, you know, it just kind of built up this body of work. So when an opportunity opened up, I was able to have, you know, this huge portfolio of games writing and drawings and took those and that's how I got my job at oneup.com, which, of course, also, you know, that opportunity opened up for me because I knew someone who I had collaborated with at the Gaming Intelligence Agency, and that was Nick Marigos,

and he said, hey, you know, as if Davis is starting up a new website, we need a graphic designer. And I know you studied graphic design, and yeah, you're into this stuff, so maybe you'd be into that. So I applied, and they loved me, and that's kind of where it's rolled from here. So even though, you know, this is not a world where big print foundations, big print publication companies are tentatively exploring the world of online because it's pretty well established at this point. I still think that kind of opportunity does come up and there's still, you know, I guess I would say that the art of maintaining your own. website and creating your own self-owned body of work like that has really kind of fallen by the wayside. And people don't really do that now. They have YouTube videos maybe or podcasts, but

you know, if you're interested in becoming a writer, that's a place where there's not a lot of opportunities, but there's also not a lot of people really building up that, that kind of, you know, that kind of portfolios. So, yeah, start a website and just write and always try to do better, you know, be open to criticism. You can take it to heart. You can feel bad about it. But ultimately, you know, build on it and learn from it and just improve and eventually, you know, hopefully an opportunity comes along and you can say, hey, look, here's all of this. And people will look at it and say, oh, that's right. That's what we need. Can I piggyback that with some actual advice that isn't just a lame joke that I'm making, actually. Please, please. I, I,

in my experience what you can what you should do and you know don't be afraid to like approach people approach a website approach someone on Twitter if it's still around just say hey I write about games do you need

like any games writing do you want you're looking for reviewers that sort of thing because once you've got yourself published online somewhere you can go somewhere else and say I've had my work published in this place then I'll go, oh, that's good. And then I'll pick you up for that.

And then you can go to the next person and say, I've had my work published in this place and this place. And that's how you sort of can build something up. Just don't be afraid to, in the first place, make contact with people because it doesn't necessarily come to you, really. I guess that's all I can offer in terms of advice, because I've not been doing it for that long. Also, don't take work that pays pennies or for free just because it's worth.

work because you should value your own writing more than that. I mean, if it's a passion thing, then by all means do what you want, but there's a lot of smaller sites that really will pay you peanuts and it's not worth your time, truly. That sounds arrogant, I know, but you should value your own work because they're not going to. Yeah, I really agree with both of those points, Stuart, especially when it comes to contacting people, because I think I've gotten all of my, you know, big contact. and a lot of great work came out of just DMing people, emailing people.

I think even like with Jeremy, I might have DM'd you on your forums or something. It just, the worst that can happen is that someone just won't respond to you. No one's going to yell at you for reaching out to them because they don't have time. If they don't like you, they're just going to ignore your message. Or maybe they just don't have time to respond. That could be something too. But yeah, we'll wrap up very soon. My own thoughts on this are that I was doing this for a long time.

I was starting my professional writing career like right out of high school in the year 2001 and like Jeremy was saying that world does not exist anymore and I feel like I was like one of the last people to take that traditional path where it's like you write for your college paper and then you do freelancing and then you work for a website

it's that easy. That does not exist anymore but thankfully the tools that you need to sell yourself and sell the things you make are very very available. So one thing that Henry and I always tell people is just have a Patreon just to send people somewhere where they can support you and you can figure it out from there but start with a way for people to find you and that could be a personal website but I say having a Patreon is very good as well and we love Patreon and they they help fun us we couldn't do this without them so I feel like that's an essential tool these days and also don't be afraid to promote yourself because otherwise no one will know about you there's too many things out there and when you are promoting yourself don't put yourself down because that is the worst way to sell yourself. And it's not making you look humble.

It's making you look like someone who's not worth engaging with. And I feel like a lot of people make that mistake by saying, oh, watch my thing. It sucks, L.O.L. And then people are like, oh, you might be right. I won't watch it. So I say that's something to avoid as well. But yeah, like the world that we grew up in, the career past that we chose, those don't exist anymore.

And a lot of places I ended up were just by accident. Like, I was in graduate school to get a Ph.D. in literature. It turns out it was more fun to freelance for websites, and that's where my life took me. And you might find yourself somewhere you didn't expect to be just out of happenstance. It's just like, it's whatever that the old saying goes. I forget how it goes exactly, but it's like success is hard work plus good luck, basically. You have to be in the right place, but also you have to have been working hard when you're in that right place. Unless you're rich, in that case, none of my advice applies at all.

you can just do whatever you want. But that's all I have to say about that. Any follow-up thoughts before we wrap up? Other than what I'd said already, I guess we're approaching websites and such. Approach developers as well, because a lot of places only want developer input content. They don't just want, like, your opinion. They want facts. They want, like, new facts.

So speak to developers. That's how I, when I approach the magazine RetroGamer, that's something I learned from them, is that they mostly want that kind of content. So worth having a backlog of material that you can pitch, basically. So Jeremy and Stewart, we are at the end of our segments. I know both of you have things you're doing outside of this podcast. Let's start with Stewart. Stewart, what else are you doing outside of Retronauts you would like to plug before you go?

My head's gone completely empty. I don't think I'd do anything, but hang on. Well, I have a press run book coming out. I'm not sure exactly when, 2023. at some point, called All Games Are Good, which is about how all games are good. And there's lots and lots of writings by me about lots and lots of games, both popular and unpopular. And I think it's a lot of fun.

I've been looking at it this weekend, and I think it's going to be a fun, funny read for people. Other than that, I do some other podcasts, do Animani Chat, which is about how much I hate animaics, although annoyingly, having done so many of them, I've started. I wanted to slightly like it. So that's, you know, personal development there. And also Mary Hell, the comic read Mary Hell. Thanks. Awesome.

Thank you, Stuart, for being on this little segment here. And Jeremy, you've got Press Run Books, the new book line from Limited Run Games. You've got your videos. Please talk about those. Yeah, I mean, that's it. I'm making books. And by banking, I don't just mean writing, but also shepherding other people's books into print. and they're all about video games

and that's about all they have in common. It's been a learning experience for me and it's not going as quickly as we had expected. But a part of that is that we're really trying to treat these books well and make them as good as possible, not just take someone's Microsoft Word doc file slap it into a quick template and run it through the press.

Like, this is a full service experience. So our goal is to really just to add something to the breadth and quality of books about video games that exist in the world in proper print, not just print on demand. In terms of videos, yeah, I've actually been doing that for nearly nine years now. My YouTube video series, it started with Game Boy and has mutated into something different. It's on YouTube, and it's just my name. Jeremy Parrish, but the thing coming up is beginning in 2023. Right at the beginning, I'm going to jump into SIGA Master System and really focus on that for the better part of the year and try to bring that coverage up to speed with the coverage I've been doing for Nintendo

platforms because it deserves it. And SG-1000 was interesting. So a master system should be too. So yeah, those are the main things that I'm doing. Yes. So there you go. Awesome. Well, thanks for Joining us, Jeremy and Stewart. Now we'll move on to the next segment. One, two, six. So we are back for the second segment on this auspicious episode. We're recording this on the blackest of Fridays. But joining us today, who do we have in Japan currently? Currently. I've been here for years, Bob.

Diamond Fight. Thank you. I mean, as of this recording, I don't know where you'll be December 5th when this goes live. I don't want anyone to call me a liar. What planet could I be on that point? Days away. We don't know what could happen. Who do we have in my future home of Canada, Who's calling in from Canada?

I am Nadia Oxford of Axis, Blog Guide, and Retronauts. I am indeed here in Toronto, and the weather's kind of nice for the time of year. That's great to hear. It is a Black Friday here, but no one really has a day off, so it's kind of a weird Black Friday. Diamond, is there Black Friday in Japan? We get all the sales and capitalism, but we don't get any days off, and there's no Thanksgiving either, so it's kind of... No Thanksgiving, only Black Friday. Yeah, it's just like, here's the name.

of the sale, so whatever. Black Friday. I'll take the sale. It's, it's kind of like an entire week in America and yes, it should be a bank holiday, a religious holiday, no work, just nothing but I guess the sales people still have to work, so I apologize to them. You're going to experience boxing day too at some point. Oh, that's right. And now I know what it means. You do. It means die, time to die. It's like a Black Friday after Christmas, correct? Pretty much. Last time I worked a black, sorry, last time I worked a boxing day, I was a janitor at a mall and I caught tuberculosis and that was the end of my janitorial career. Thank you, Boxing Day, for your, for your generous gifts. My Black Friday Mall experiences did not give me tuberculosis, so I can

say that at least. They were, they were slightly more pleasant than that. But moving on to our next segment here. So we've done our first segment. We talked to Stewart and Jeremy. We talked about me. This next segment I'm calling Diamond and Nadia, colon, origin. So we're going to talk about where Diamond and Nadia came from in terms of how they ended up on Retronauts as hosts, because as I said in the first segment, listeners know a little too much about me and Jeremy at this point. We've been doing this on Retronauts for 11 years, Jeremy longer than me. And I want to start with both of you because your history goes back a long, long ways, and it goes all the way back to the one-up days. So let's start with Nadia. Nadia, what was your journey like to become a retronaut's host?

And I know that you were freelancing for one-up basically when it was a new website, if I'm correct about that. Yeah, when the site actually just launched, I was commissioned by Jeremy to write an article about Mega Man. I can't remember specifically what it entailed and why it was exactly, like what exactly had to say about Mega Man. I think it just said like he's a blue robot and got paid for it. So that was pretty cool. But my history with Jeremy actually goes back further. I used to blog on now dead platforms, thank God. And I guess he found me through that.

And liked, I know that he liked the Jethra Wattal reference. I had on my Mega Man website at the time. So that was probably a big leg up right there. Because if you ever want, if you ever want to put Jeremy in a good mood, just offer him some Jeth Rital, like kind of like the way you do when you're offering a dog a treat. So that they'll calm down and be nice to you. I'm kidding. I love you, Jeremy.

Because yes, he's. Any Prague rock reference will soothe Jeremy into a catatonic state. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And then he'll approve any feature you want to write. I want to write something. Oh, man, I can write a great book about just the history of Prague Rock and video games, how it intertwines. But anyway, yeah, so I knew him for a long time beforehand, and that's why I suppose he got me to write for one-up. And we've just kind of known each other since then.

Like, I wrote a lot for the retronauts blog when it went up. I wrote a lot of articles for Retronauts as well as one-up. I wrote for the Toasty Frog Zine, if anyone remembers that, out there. And eventually, Paris just said, hey, you want to be a host on the show because I had been a guest many times before that point. And I was doing Acts of the Blood God, so I'd lost a podcast experience. I said, sure. And Bob's your uncle, as I say. I am, truly.

I'm the uncle of all listeners. We know it. Yeah, Nadia, you and I have crossed over a few times because we were both one-up freelancers. You were still a freelancer when I was there full time. We both wrote for Jeremy's Toasty Frog Zine. and I'm not sure if you were for the GameSpite journals but I was there for those and we actually met once in at E32011 my first E3 for an on-the-floor retronauts recording and that's basically the only time Nadi and I have been in the same room together in our entire lives I assume it will happen at some point again in the future but that's been it basically we kind of meet each other like ships at passing the night don't we like you were you on the panel for it was a recent PACs before the plague. It was about Metroid, Super Metroid versus Castlevania, same from the night and just kind of there defending it. And I, yes. So you were there for that.

Yes. Actually, okay, so I apologize. We've been in the same room twice. Uh, the pandemic has done crazy things to my brain. I forget most things that happened before 2020, but we were at that PACs panel and I was sitting next to you and Mike Drucker. So twice it's happened. Yeah, it has. But that was like basically 10 years apart in history. Yeah, which may as well be a thousand years. Well, Nadia, it's about the damn time you became a retronautist because you do great work. Thank you. And I've been aware of you since, like, the early aught. So it only makes sense.

Now, Diamond, I forget. And, like, I apologize if I'm forgetting something. Have we ever, like, interacted in the same space? Have we ever met in real life? And I assume I'm forgetting some, like, very important moment in my life that actually happened. No, no. I mean, the closest we've come to interacting is via this podcast. And even that's been a recent development.

For years, for years, you and I were just sort of, you know, web friends, you know, We would, you know, tweet at each other. I think we hooked up on Facebook one point. But, yeah, no, there's been no, no physical interaction. Your hands have never touched my hands. You should change that. I think, I think we all go back far enough where I was also reading both of your live journals. For sure.

Yeah, yeah, I had a live journal. That's how old we are. So, Diamond, did you have a live journal? I think I remember a Fight Club Live journal. Did that ever exist? I was blogging on my own platform. I actually owned, I owned Fight Club.com. Don't go there today.

Who knows? I don't know who owns it. It's probably porn. But, uh, but, uh, but we say that. Yeah. No, I just, I had, I was, I was blogging on Fight Club back in 2004. And I maintained that for a while. But, uh, yeah, because I was, because I was, because I, I sort of put myself in the

habit of writing almost daily. Uh, after I moved to Japan, uh, I just, you know, I was, I was still blogging and writing about just myself, but also, you know, movies I saw and games I play. played, and I started freelance writing, thanks to sheer coincidence. I did, I did, I covered a Tokyo game show for Wired back in 2009. I remember that. And while I was in Tokyo, that's when I first met Jeremy face-to-face. He was there.

And shortly after that, I got in touch with, you know, them. And I was doing, then I started doing some freelancing for one up. And I actually called in, and somewhere in that space is when I started listening to the retronauts, because I didn't know. what a podcast was until after I had a literal iPod and then someone's like, oh, you got a little podcast. Like, what is that? I don't understand what that is.

But that was definitely one of the first shows I started listening to. And when the show transitioned to a call-in feature, I remember calling in several times, which was kind of fun for me. But yeah, then it was it wasn't until, geez, probably 2017,

2018, when Jeremy spoke to me about possibly writing for the site. And even then it was it was just very periodic just sort of like oh what about this thing and i would just write a thing every once in a while and uh i appeared on a few episodes here and there uh mostly then like whenever we were in the same place like i did um jeremy jermine i record an episode at bit summit about the uh s nk 40th where my s neo geo t-shirt today yes and i just sort of cool i trickled in there you know and then all of a sudden jeremy's like hey would you like

would you like to host episodes like yes yes i would very much thank you and um that's It's been super exciting for me. I've been able to interview some people here. And I hope I get to interview more people around here and make more shows because I love talking about video games. And so I'm having a great time podcasting. And I hope I get to do more. I'm sure. That's great.

I wanted both of you to tell your stories because I'm sure for a lot of folks out there who might not know where you came from, they heard your voice and they thought, this isn't Bob or Jeremy. It's some sort of trick being played on me. but just in case you didn't know yeah we go back a long ways we're we're all part of the freelancing to podcaster pipeline that doesn't exist anymore because now you can just buy a microphone and become a podcaster before you had to work hard enough to go to the office where they kept the microphones but now they're freely available to all all comers they're on amazon and everything so yes it's a very different time to be alive and I wanted to start off with some broad questions up front for both of you I've already answered these in the first segment and I've Croped out a few of the questions that were more for the people who have been on the show longer. So for both of you who have been doing podcasts for a few years now for Retronauts, I want to know, and we'll start with Nadia again. My question for you, Nadia, is what topic surprised you the most once you started digging into it, something you've covered so far? A topic that surprised me most once I started digging into it. Shoot, that is a good question.

Like, I think the history of JRPGs as not just like an NES thing, but going further back, like the MSX and the PC 88, PC98, like we've done a lot of shows on the really, the barest origins of JRP's and how Japan got so into Dungeon and Dragons and transferred that to computers while Westerners did their own thing, even though Japan was working with Western material. I've learned a lot about that since podcasting, and I think it's an extremely interesting topic. And there's several shows about it on probably Retronauts as well, but on Axel the Blood God. And you should absolutely go there and learn a thing. And Diamond, how about you? Which topic surprised you the most when you started looking into it more? You know, I think it would probably be some of the street fighter stuff I've done over the course of this year, because I feel like you've got the two extremes.

we did an episode about Street Fighter Alpha and when you read about that game even though Street Fighter was already a huge huge franchise at that point they threw that game together in the span of a couple months and like

Capcom wanted even faster and they're like we'll give it to you as fast as we can that game was made in an incredibly short period of time and by contrast and kind of over the same period of time they spent years working on different ideas that eventually turned into Street Fighter 3 and it went through so many different phases and it like it wasn't

even a Street Fighter game at first and then it became a Street Fighter game but like none of the people making it had made any Street Fighter games before it so it's like even though Street Fighter 2 was this massive I don't think people can understand how massive Street Fighter 2 was just as a singular video game how it was everywhere and it spawned all this different media yet somehow these two different follow-ups Street Fighter Alpha Street Fighter 3 one was made incredibly hastily one was kind of came together over the course of years, but no one knew what they were doing, and it just, that kind of blew my mind. You figure that once something like that makes a lot of money, you're like, okay, well, we got to make a new one, and it's got to be really great, folks. It's like, no, they just, some executives, like, why should you this? Why don't you do this? Is this ready yet?

We need to release this now. Okay, it's done. Yeah, sure. Give us the one-armed Brazilian old man. Yeah, sure. Hey, he's cool. Let's, who is that, Odo? I think his name is. Oral, you're thinking of Deep-Dex-N-Odo. Yeah, I was going to say, wait a minute, that's a Star Trek character. There are no shapeshifters and Street Fighter, as far as I know. Yeah, I mean, I think it helps that now there are many more resources compared to even 10 years ago where I'm sure the recent oral history that I believe Matt Leone put together. I'm sure that was very instrumental in learning a lot about Street Fighter that had never been talked about before. So a lot of these resources did not exist. It was like Wikipedia, YouTube playthroughs.

But now people are doing the work. People are doing interviews more than ever before because. we are we are starting to lose people now so i think there's even more of an initiative to get the stories out while we can get them out yeah there's also as you said earlier bob the fact that everyone can have a microphone now that makes it so easy to interview people like you'd be surprised how how well you probably know as anyone how receptive people are usually being on on a show and talking about what they know it's pretty great yeah i believe you just recently sat down with the star control folks we did that was great that was uh fred and paul just came out of nowhere

after our first episode and said, like, hey, we'd love to do a follow-up and it's like, okay, I'm not going to tell me twice. So, like, we did that with Shiva, Mbat, and Sharky, you know, good old Scott Sharky who hadn't talked to in years, came out of hibernation to do that one. And that was a, those were great episodes. Like, I, for sure I recommend them, probably some of my favorites. Scott Sharky will make an appearance on Retronauts about every eight years. That's a fact.

He will. He can set your watch to it. He goes underground and then comes out. I do want to move on to the next broad question for both of you. And I want to know, and we'll start with Diamond. What personal favorite topics haven't you covered that you really want to? Even if you don't have the time, these aren't necessarily promises to the audience. So audience out there, if Nadia says she wants to do an episode about, I don't know, Jade Cacoon or whatever.

I don't want you tweeting at her and saying, where's my Jade Cacoon episode? These are just, you know, we're just thinking in the broad terms. We're just like wishful thinking. So Diamond, like which topics do you really want to cover, even if you might not have the time to really dig into it quite yet? Well, we did a Google 13 episode not too long ago, which I had, I thought, was a lot of fun. And considering how many things they've influenced, there's definitely a few manga slash anime topics that I'd love to dig into on Retronauts. If you listen to my episodes, if you read what I've written, I don't think these are being surprised. But I think, there's like 30 Fifth the North Star video games.

So, like, that's a huge, gigantic topic. There's also, you know, I can do some quick posing, but Jojo's Our Venture is a series that I adore, and that doesn't have as many video games in name, but the fact is that everyone who's made video games in the last 25 years, at least, like they all, especially in Japan, they all read Jojo, they all loved it, and they all put in references to it in their work. So it's kind of like, I feel like those two topics alone could probably cover four different episodes because there's, There's so much material there. And also, I just want to keep going with, you know, I've done a lot of Street Fighter and fighting game stuff this year. You know, we did Street Fighter episodes. We did Mortal Kombat episode.

I did a Dark Circuit episode that I'm very proud of. I feel like there's way more fighting game topics that I want to cover on the show. And, hey, I'm wearing a NeoGeo t-shirt. There's no reason I can't talk about more NeoGeo games on Retronauts. Hell, yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, I've got, believe me, I've written some of these things. down. I've got a long list of things I want to cover on the show. So please, it's okay. If you tweeted me, it's more like a reminder. Like, hey, do you have time for this yet? Like,

I'm finding time for it, sir or madam. I mean, there's a big gap in fighting game episodes because Jeremy and I aren't really into them. We appreciate them, but we're not outside of like Street Fighter 2 and maybe Mortal Kombat for me. That's kind of where it ended. Nadia, how about you? Like, what are your dream topics that you haven't covered yet on retronauts that you really want to dig into. I might actually do this. And of course, again, to echo Diamond, if you want to tweet at me, be my guest. I'd love to do an analysis, a whole extended thing about this is going to be so stupid, but how Stephen King has influenced games, like his works. It's insane how much is there, like the way that the mist, which is a short story from skeleton crew. I can't remember

what it was written in. But that alone inspired Silent Hill. It inspired just whatever you see fog in a game that's full of monsters you know the mist had a hand in it and it's not just that there's also it the way it inspired earthbound and just I could go on and on and on and there's some weird weird connections

you would never see like the way Nino Cooney is basically the talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King when he was writing as under a pseudonym that I can't remember at the time but yeah I actually tried to get a hold of Namco and say a band-a-namco and said

can I interview somebody about this? Because I wasn't accusing anyone of anything. I was fascinated. I said, this is one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time. And this game is obviously a tribute to it. Can I talk to someone about this? And they said, no, you cannot. So I haven't given up. I will get it someday. But as Diamond said,

there's a topic that can span like many episodes. And I'd like to get into it someday. And maybe I will. Maybe I will. Yeah, I really love to know about the presence of Stephen King in Japan. Like how many of his novels have been translated, what the fandom is like there because I know also stand by me or the body yeah like so many things are based on that to the point where that's the first thing you see in Pokemon the original

games is stand by me on the television so yeah I'm just really curious about like what the fandom is like and how it influencing that's a great topic yeah I think that the whole thinking about it the body has that whole like RPG party dynamic where they're kind of going out on a kind of a grisly quest but it's a quest nonetheless and yes that was referenced in Pokemon also of course Fantasy 15 started with well this whole thing is a reference to stand by me but it starts with literally stand by me playing by Florence in the

machine. Yes they really wanted to let you know what their influence was there but I do like that game. I want to move on now to our specific questions, and because I'm hosting, the first one is just for me. So Retronauts does adventure games, says, or sorry, Retronauts does adventure game, this episode says, so we know what this person really wants. They say, I absolutely love Point and Click LucasArts miniseries,

and we'd love to see more content like that. Did you, Bob, grow up playing those games? Would you consider looking into some of the more abstract point-and-clicks like I Have No Mouth and I'm a scream? The 997 Blade Runner or even the Sierra Quest series, Police Kings slash Space. And yeah, I grew up. We got a PC for the family in 96, so I missed a lot of like the big boom era. But my issue is I played the LucasArts games first, which made every other once inferior. And it's hard to go back, even though I do go back to games from like way before that.

but I just like the LucasArts role set so I'm always thrown off by Sierra Games but on the Retronaut schedule I mentioned this in the first part of the episode there are topics I keep pushing to the future because I don't have time yet and King's Quest is one of those and I really want to dig into those

but I feel like in the future we probably will have one episode per Sierra Quest series I just need to find time to not necessarily play the games because I want to stay sane but experience them in some way that's not me smashing my head against the wall and trying to get through them.

That might have been a pandemic project, but I was not that self-destructive. But I feel like they all need to be looked at, especially now that Roberta Williams is making games again. Yes. So, yes. At some point, don't, this is not a promise, but I do really want to do a Quest series episode,

probably King's Quest first, because it's the most popular brand. Well, it's not quite a retro episode, but since they mentioned it, I did write a column about, I have no mouth, but I'm a scream. And I think that was a short story I read a long time ago that really left an impression on me. So I always wanted to play the game. So a couple of years ago, I did get the game and played through it.

And it's frequently on sale. So I feel like that's a wonderful topic that I think could probably cover it even more on retronauts. It's a very interesting game. Yeah, I've read the story, but I haven't played the game. It's very interesting. There's something else like it. And it's the subject of the lawsuit against the Terminator movie. movies, I believe, about the evil

AI. I think that's why Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron or the film company or whatever, which is why he now has to get a credit in Terminator movies, I think. Oh, I didn't know that. I don't think it's that story, but he, I mean, he wrote so much that he's, you know, he had a, he had a hand in a lot of works in the 60s and 70s. And I feel like also just, given Harlan Ellison's, uh, let's say it, call it personality. Uh, I think he just, he was very aggressive as far as, you know, He's a little eccentric, isn't he?

Yeah, he was a lot. And I think that's one of the reasons the game sends us so much is that they hired him. Like, hey, you've written the story, you're willing to talk to a microphone, or shout on a microphone, rather. Why don't you play the computer? And he plays the computer.

Like, he's not an actor, but that's a performance. That is a capital P performance. Let me tell you. Yes. He is the computer who hates both in the game and in real life. Moving on, this is for everyone. Kevin says, a question for the host,

do you feel it is worthwhile to collect and maintain physical collections as the age of hardware and components makes it more difficult to enjoy the games? There are many releases of digital collections and some gray market ways to experience the games without original hardware. Who wants to jump in first here? I'll go ahead. I will say that I am very lazy. I download everything because I'm like, oh, it's midnight. I want to play Pokemon. Let's do this. And my husband, though, is much more diligent about collecting games, and especially games he likes,

like he would get, like, steal-book editions and put them on the shelf and stuff like that. So I'm relying on him to kind of do the game preservation thing while I just kind of talk out of my butt and then make everything worse, like I tend to do. So, yeah, that's, is it worth it? I don't know. At this point, I would say if you have a personal attachment to a game,

absolutely. Like, I would like to get, say, this special collector's edition of Zunblay Chronicles 3, but we all know that would never really happen. So stuff like that, I think, it's worthwhile, but collecting in general, I would not touch it anymore. It's just too much of a fire, a radioactive zone. Yeah, I'm definitely the kind of person who I like to go to stores. I like to look at games, especially here in Japan. There's still so many stores that have

just acres of used games sitting there, and not just Japanese games, but also import games. And so when I'm in the city and I make, I make a point of going to these shops and looking at them. And, you know, there are a couple titles that always jump out at me. I know I'm always looking for the Resident Evil, the DS version of Resident Evil, not because I want to play it again, just because I had it once and I kind of want to have it again and maybe, maybe get into the try, but yeah, yeah, I would say I don't actively collect in that I'm trying to finish something or accumulate some specific things, but I'm definitely the kind of person who likes going to those stories and when I see something, I will get it. Somewhere in this room,

I know I've got the Famicom cartridge for Life Force. because it's one of the prettiest Famicom cards in the world. It's like this translucent teal piece of plastic. It just looks fantastic. So I just, that's how I am. Like, if I see something, I will buy it, but I don't really like look for stuff or seek things out. And I definitely don't, I definitely don't go to eBay or anything trying to find some kind of rare collectibles. But yeah, there are a couple things out there where I have them back my mind. Like, if I see them, I kind of want them just to have them. You know, I definitely bought, I definitely put in my head when I started doing a lot of Resident Evil stuff

in the last couple of years, I made it a point to go to Book Off here in Japan and I bought all the original Resident Evil games one, two, three, and Code Veronica. I just, I have hard copies of them. I mean, am I playing those hard copies? No. You know, I have one,

two, and three in my Vita, which is, which is, it's right over here. But, um, I have mine. Just over there. I just, I won of those copies so I have those copies and I, somehow I feel better. I guess it helps that they were 300 yen each so that does help yeah that does help I mean for for me I'm a kind of a broken record you probably heard me say this before but I feel like too much focus on retro games is about collecting and like ooh what's your rarest game and things like that where for me it's like whatever

way I can play it is fine and there's a period in my life where I moved a lot didn't have a lot of money to move so I began to resent all of my things so now I try to keep a digital for the most part unless something really means a lot to me but it has to really mean a lot and usually it's digital uh even if like a new $60 game just because I don't want to have to deal with a new box, I don't want to figure out what to do with the game when I'm done with it and so on. And I know there's a fear like, like, oh, what happens

if so-and-so is delisted? I think to this point in time, I have like 2,000 digital games maybe. So like if an entire platform is delisted and something happens, I can't access those games. I still have enough video games for eight lifetimes and I'm halfway through my one lifetime at best.

So I feel like I'm going to be okay. Like if Steam delisted, 300 of my games, or sorry, half my games, I'd still have 300 games to play. If, like, they took away half my collection or, like, 75%, I'd still be just fine. And I do get the frustrations of retro gaming collectors because retro gaming, uh, retro game things are a lot more expensive now, especially if you buy like the original cartridges and stuff, but I feel like these things are getting older and they were never designed to last longer than like a Christmas basically or like a year in the hands of an eight year old.

so it does kind of make sense when I see like a cart that's $800 like oh yeah there's only so many left of these that can actually play the game when I see a shrink wrapped you know graded Mario 64 for like a million dollars I'm like well that's a scam this is somebody's laundering money but when I see like a $200 DS card I'm like it probably should cost that much I don't know where else to find one and I guess the market decides but when possible I am digital only just because I'm trying to as I get older and hardware accumulates naturally, I want less software on my shelves, I think. For sure, yeah, it makes a difference if you live in a one-bedroom apartment like I do. You don't have a lot of room for games. I will say quickly, though, my dream collection,

the one thing I do want to have is a boxed copy of Dragon Warrior 3 for the NES. Like, something like that I would love to have or Dragon Quest, sorry, Dragon Warrior 4 even, but 3 is really my white whale. I managed to snag very cheaply the Famicom card of Dragon Quest 3, just the cart.

and if you go retro game shopping all the Dragon Quest cards are just three to five bucks because they made so many of them for Japan and everyone had one. So that's my tip for everyone out there. If you want like a Dragon Quest 3 just to have on your shelf or whatever they're very available. I'm a warrior

three though. Warrior man. That's less available. I couldn't even get that for Christmas when I asked for it when it was new. Oh you did? That's how unavailable it was. Yes. Oh my goodness gracious. I like that. But I got Kristolis instead and it was a fine game too. That's a good substitute. But Grant says moving on here if you could take any work and adapt it into a 90s arcade style beat

them up slash belt scroller what would you base it on and who would be your four main playable characters i will go because i've had this idea uh for over a decade there needs to be a king of the hill style brawler in the style of the simpsons because there are four guys there are four joysticks and uh it works out perfectly i can just see it right now and they can all Hank can swing a propane tank around. Dale can use pocket sand. Bill can do some kind of military techniques. Boomhauer's special, like, move

as he can drive his hot roddle around the screen. I don't know. I think it makes itself, but we're beyond this time of license game so they can never make it. That's my own fantasy. King of the Hill, Simpson style brawler. How about you folks?

Well, Bob, I think you and I have very similar thought process because, you know, because I thought of the Simpsons when I read this question, and because the Simpsons is such a great video game, even though, like, that show is not about fighting, but they've made a great game about fighting with the Simpsons. I think it's tragic that we never got a Futurama beat him up. Because, let's be honest, you got, you know, you got Fry, Lila, Bender.

And the fourth person, you got so many choices. My number one would be Zoidberg because he's got the claws, you know? And we all know that when Zoiber gets horny, he's willing to kill. That's true. His frill can come out. Yeah, exactly. But you could, you could put anywhere. Amy could be there on her party board.

Oh, my God. I forgot his name. Not Dexter. Hubert. No, the... Farnsworth. The bureaucrat guy who's... Oh, Hermes.

Yes, Hermes. I thought of his rival, Dexter. I mean, he... That's okay. I have a Futurama podcast, so I kind of just have to know this by the nature of my job. Yeah. I feel like, you know, even far... Yeah, you could put Farnsworth in there, you know, in his lazy boy.

He wouldn't even have to get out of his chair. You know, they can fight robots. That show is full of robots. There's so many enemies they could fight. They could fight the slurm creatures. They could fight the Omocron Percy Eye aliens. I mean, you could have mini games based on other famous video games. Like, there's a whole, I know there is a Futurama video game that I've watched on YouTube, but let's be on.

I just, you know, when I read this topic. Yeah. I feel like that would be a perfect fit, Futurama fighting. Yeah, I don't think you want to play the Futurama 2003. 3D platformer. It's a mistake. I don't think I've tried it. I don't think I will.

I watched the cutscenes. They were pretty funny. That's all I did too. Nadia, and any fantasy four-player brawler IP adaptations for you? Actually, yes. I would probably just go,

see, I absolutely adore Dungeons and Dragon, Shadow of Mistara, and Tower of Doom. So I would kind of do something like that, but with the Red Wall property, you could have, I don't know how familiar

either you are with Redwall, but it's like the thing about the mice spearing each other with swords. Oh, I'm very familiar with Red Bull. Oh, okay, good. So you know what I'm up to here? Like, I would have...

At least through the 90s, at least. Did you ever see the Nelvana cartoon? Not the first season, but the second season that adapted to Madameo, because that was really good. And you had Tim Curie as Slagar the Fox. I think that came out when I was a surly teenager and I just thought it looked cheap and I was mad. It wasn't stop motion or something like that. So I probably should have watched it, but I didn't. But I've heard it's good.

I've heard people like it's good. For the game, though, you could have like, since Madameo was, a story about like the older generation rescuing the younger generation. I always thought it was a badass setup. So you could have like to start with maybe, of course you have Matthias, you have, I can't remember the name of that damn rabbit. You have Orlando the Axe, who's the badger. You could have like any number of characters as your fourth, like cornflower or whomever.

And then you have the younger generation, like you have Madameo. You have, I can't remember the name of the female badger, but you also had like, oh, you had a bunch of characters you could kind of towed around with. And they all have swords. and they all have pointy things, and it's just a recipe for, for a lot of fun times, just fighting foxes and stouts and mean animals that have no chance of redemption because their souls are tainted. And also bonus levels where you eat giant feasts. Yes, yes, absolutely. Half those books are just descriptions of different cakes, I think.

Cakes and I never forgot like things like the turnip pasties and stuff like that. It's like, oh, damn, I love turnips. I want some right now. So moving on here, so Feene-Fewinox, I think that's how you say. Fikwanag says, who is everyone's bucket list interview? There have been a lot of notable interviews over the years with some being a dream come true for the host of the episode. But what interviews are still out there for each of you that you hope to grab before circumstances make them non-viable? I have my own direct answer for this.

Diamond and Nadia, I don't know if you have your own ready to go. Well, I think because I live here in Japan and because of the reasons I've already mentioned, I would love to interview some of the creators of various months. manga properties that have had such long influences. I mean, obviously, I think everyone in Japan wants to interview Hidohika Raki, the creator of Joseph's Our Adventure, but I also have, I would love to talk to Akira Toriyama because not only has he created, you know, these incredibly popular manga characters, but they hired him for some of the most popular video games of all time, and he created those characters, too.

So I feel like that would be a wonderful person to talk to. I don't know if he does that at all. I have no idea. But yeah, I would say there's definitely a few creators in that field that I would love to talk to at length. And, you know, frankly, given that a couple years ago, Takao Saito passed away, that kind of gave me a nudge. Like, maybe you should try and reach out to people. Who knows? Maybe they'll say yes.

They won't hurt you, you know. They might say no, but they won't hurt you. So. They won't bite. Yeah. Maybe. I've been very, very lucky and fortunate in that I've had some really great interviews with them really great people. like, gosh, like Yuji Hori, I got to meet one-on-one, Yoshi-P,

Brian Reynolds, I think, who did Civilization. And that was an interesting interview because, is it Brian Reynolds? Is that his name? I'm so sorry, because I don't play Siv. But I was interviewing him because of Zinga, and he moved to Zinga. So that's when I kind of started my whole mobile career writing. Sorry, my mobile writing career. But I think my bucket list, because I still have not interviewed this gentleman,

and that is Noble Yomatsu, a musician for many, many games. including especially well-known Final Fantasy games. Alongside him, I'd love to interview Salkin, who does a lot of the music for Final Fantasy 14, which is its own really epic playlist. But I just always love the topic of music in video games. So I haven't interviewed many musicians, and I'd love to do that sometime,

but Nobu Yomatsu is definitely top of my list. And I do want to make that happen someday, and I will go for it one day when I am brave. I've seen him speaking on NHK, so I feel like he's got to be available in some capacity. He's pretty accessible. It's just my own cowardice talking because I know lots of people who have interviewed him and he seems apparently like to be a really cool guy.

As for me, I think mine are interviews I'd like to do over out of the context of promoting whatever new game is out because I've had the chance to talk to people I really respect but it was always one of those interviews where the PR person has like a sniper rifle across the room and you can feel the laser on your head and they're like, today we're here to talk about new rules. release, so keep your questions about new release and maybe they'll let you have one question about their

past. And those interviews were I talked to Hiro Nobosakaguchi in his hotel room, but the interview had to be about terror battle. Oh, really? Yeah, I talked to A.G. Al-Numa. But it had to be about Tri-Force heroes. A game

a game I wouldn't pee on if it was on fire. It doesn't work. I'm sorry. I wanted to like that game. And also I talked to Tanabe the director of Mario 2 USA. Oh, cool. But it had to be about

Tropical Freeze. A game I do like. Oh, come on, though. And in this case, it was like, well, okay, nerd. Well, you can ask one question about a game you care about, but today we're here to talk about new release. So it was one of those. So those are all ones I would want to redo

without the context of a new release. Although I did, I was so fortunate to get an interview with Koji Kondo. Not to promote anything. I was just thrown an interview with Koji Kondo and it was amazing and I treasure that one and it was like finally they let us talk to someone

without talking about a new game I know that's why they bring these people out but I just want to talk about their histories and I have so many questions I would say two that I have not talked to that I would like to although I don't know how good of interviews they would be

are Takashi Tezaka basically Miyamoto's yeah like he is instrumental and so many of the things that we love Miyamoto gets all the credit and he probably deserves most of the credit,

but Tezuka was there when these decisions were being made and making these games with Miyamoto. And I feel like he might be too humble. Whenever I see him, he's far too humble for the importance he should have. And also, I would love to interview Hiditaka Miyazaki, the Dark Souls guy, although I feel like he's as enigmatic as his games. Yeah, for sure. And these both might not be better interviews or good interviews,

so maybe I was better off not getting them. But kind of that's, if something could happen, if I can get these interviews, that would be my dream, I think. Sorry, I missed the name of the fellow who did Super Mario 2 USA. That would be incredible. I would love to just go pick that guy's brain. But you had to talk about Tropical Freeze, which, as you said, was a great game,

but not Super Mario USA, which is such a fascinating project. Yeah, Kenske Tanabe, and I think Tropical Freeze is the one Donkey Kong country game I actually like, and I like it a lot. But yeah, the interview was about that. He was overseeing that game, but I think I got one old, question in and they let me have that. So that was basically it for that.

Right. Moving on, Chris says, when choosing a game to play next, either retro or modern, how do you do it? Do you keep a list of games you want to play? Do you play multiple games at once or stick to one and beat it? Or at least got all the enjoyment out of it that you can before moving on to the next one. I have my own answer for this. Anyone want to jump in to answer this one? Well, I can say that I make a list every year of all the anniversaries, which is how I both how I decide things for my column.

And, you know, in case anyone does know, spoiler alert, whenever you see a tweet, from Retronauts, it's probably me. And I certainly use this list in coming up with all those, you know, anniversary tweets and mentioning this, mentioning that. So when a game has an anniversary coming up, I do try to visit it or revisit it if I can. You know, a lot of times it's just not possible or it's like, you know, a hundred-hour experience. It's like, no, I'm not going to play this game.

There's no time for that. But I do try to, I do try to experience games when I can. if it's topical because that way I can I can mention the column or you know for doing a show I can mention it in the show but you know I'm also you know I'm a human being I'm susceptible to the whims you know just fancy I can I can say right now we're recording this you know in late November was my birthday recently I bought myself a used copy of Sonic Frontiers because it was cheap and I've never really played a 3D Sonic game before and I'm put a lot of hours in this game I've really having a good time with it so I just feel like I Like, that was, that came out of nowhere. It was, again, it was, it was just a total, like, I'm in, I'm in a store. Oh, this is cheap, sure. And, um, I'm having a great time with it. So that kind of threw, that threw out, like, a bunch of the games I thought I might play this month.

And instead, I'm, I'm collecting rings and I'm, I'm fighting giant robots. And I'm also going fishing. I don't know. It's, it's such a bizarre game. It is kind of a weird game. As for me, I am, now that I am no longer kind of bound by games writing anymore, at least not any serious way. It is so weird because I can just pick up what I want and I don't have

to worry about, oh, SEO, oh, make this into content, oh, make this into something people will care about. So I kind of drift. Of course, I play a lot of major RPG releases because for Axel Blug God our whole thing is RPGs. We talk about major releases, but I also have time to kind of pick up indies and

stuff like that and get a little bit surprised. One of my favorite games this year was Shovel Night Dig, which is the kind of the Downwell Shovel Night Clone, and that was great. I really had a great time with that. But otherwise, I kind of listen to the buzz on Twitter, and I do things accordingly. If I hear about a game that I think I might like, I check it out a little bit further and say, okay, this isn't for me, or okay, I think I'll like this.

To be honest, I have my PlayStation 5. I use it for Final Fantasy 14, and that's about it so far. But I use my Switch for almost everything else. And lately I've been playing a lot of PSP, yeah, PSP for a project that I can't speak about yet. but yeah whatever I need to work on that's my first priority and thankfully I'm usually not too wound up in that but from there I just go with what looks cool what looks fun and yeah I have a good time I'm also free from the the shackles of games writing as well in terms of what I can choose to play and I have been for like almost half a decade now or more than that so that's been very freeing but now for the past couple

years maybe three or four I have kept the spreadsheet just because I want to actually finish games I used to be very bad about finishing games because of working in the games press. You just have no time. You have to finish the games you're reviewing if you have time for that even. But now I really make sure that I try not to start more than like two or three games at once. And then like if I'm playing one 100 hour game, I won't start another 100 hour game. I'll make sure like I need to finish this one first. So keeping a list or keeping a spreadsheet makes me feel more responsible.

But it also helps me play different kinds of games. I was like, oh, I just played an action game. maybe I'll play like a puzzle game or a mystery game or something like I like having different experiences as much as possible or like oh here's this new kind of game that's out I really want to try that and see what that's like so that helps me keep my like gaming diet varied I guess for about lack of a better term and I recommend that to all of you and I also recommend if you don't like a game drop it like a hot rock my wife has actually helped me do this more than I used to be able to like I was I kept complaining to her about the messenger playing through that, specifically the other half of that game, which I really don't like, and I finished it, and I just felt empty. And I think she helped me learn the lesson,

like, just stop playing a game if you don't like it. There's nothing wrong with abandoning a game. And I've been a plenty that I did like just because I didn't have time. So I'm throwing that out there. Please stop playing games you don't like. You don't need to. Free yourself.

There's only so much free time in our lives. You won't get it back. I didn't even make it to that second half. I didn't even get that far, Messenger. This did not work for me. The first half is very good. I have real problems in the second half. Nadia, sorry.

Oh, I just say, saying to respond to you, saying, if you are a games reviewer and he can't drop it, I'm sorry. You just keep on plugging away, man. You'll get there. Yes. I have a lot of sympathy as someone who reviewed games for seven or eight years, something like that. It's hats off to our very brave game reviewers.

I respect them so much. It's a tough job and somebody has to do it. moving on joe says first off i want to thank you all for the podcast it's got me through some hard times long drives and some very real covid loneliness how's doing the podcast helped you in any way other than the whole making a living thing i should say thanks again keep up the great work and that's from joe um i will say to joe uh yeah like the podcast has helped me obviously it podcasting is my living now i couldn't do that without retronauts i couldn't do that by being at the right place at the right time i one-up when there were still a lot of big websites when there were still a lot of podcasting happening at those sites and I feel like um doing a podcast for a living has made me a lot more confident in terms of just being in public and presenting myself like I did do a bit of teaching before I was a podcaster but I never could have seen myself doing live performances live comedy shows and stuff like that and I will say that's uh just by being on mic so much

and having to constantly have thoughts, opinions, and jokes ready. It's gotten me a lot more confident with, like, being in my own skin out in public, and that was an issue for me as a nerd growing up, as I'm sure it was for a lot of listeners and perhaps even hosts out there. So that's what the podcast has done for me in a non-monetary way. I've long held fantasies about performing. You know, I did a lot of, I did acting when I was a kid, and it's always been sort of in the back of my mind for many years.

So the fact that the last couple years I've been able to do. do not just guests on a Retronaut show with other people, but also like just come up with a concept and host the episode and the fact that also the columns that I'm writing and reading those columns every week, I feel like that has helped me scratch that itch, and it's only convinced me more that I need to write and perform more as much as possible whenever I possibly can.

So I'm actively looking for more work in that field. So I feel like the last couple years of Retroner Even though I've only done a little bit, and I want to do more retronauts, it's also sort of been vindication for me. It's like, no, no, really, this is, you enjoy this, and I think you can do it, so I should keep doing it. That's how, that's been my experience. My experience echoes yours a lot, Bob, actually, in that now I find to have a lot more confidence. I'm kind of a lot more new to a consistent podcast than you are. Like, I really started with U.S. Gamer, Kat, had a podcast, he actually the blood got,

said, I really need to co-host your, you're doing it because she was my boss. I said, okay, that's fine. I knew nothing about podcasting except for coming on restaurants once in a while and screwing it up. So I said, all right, I'll do it. And what it just surprised me to learn, like people have always liked my writing, which is very nice. I'm always glad about that. But to know that people want to hear me speak and hear my opinions and my jokes and all my stupid crap that comes out of my mouth has been really validating. Like, I almost feel like I am, here I am 40 years old and I finally know what to go with my life. I know that sounds kind of, you know, sad, but it's very true. It's just

I was a little bit aimless before I started podcasting and actually the rise of COVID and getting laid off from US gamer and Kat and I going independent with Axel of Blood God. That was a big part of what made me really boost my confidence because I had no choice. Like I have always been a really, really, really great people person, but extremely introverted. So that's kind of a weird mix. Always really good at sales. Always really good at like service jobs and talking people but unless you force me to do it i will not do it i will sit in my apartment and play final fantasy 14 i love you all but go to hell that kind of attitude so yeah i've been doing like panels and people want me to come to shows and they want me to come to panels and they want me to be with them as

they present their their cool stuff people a lot more important than me people a lot cooler than me and it's very humbling it's very it's very nice though and i just want to say that if you are feeling kind of aimless because oh my god i'm 20 uh don't don't waste your energy on on stress it's not worth it. This world is changing so fast. Everything's just tumbling around. Grab what you can and run with it. If you can make people happy, good, good for you. Go for it. I know it's not the most important job in the world, but it's satisfying. It's good. Yeah, Nadia, you're saying the world changes so fast. I mean, when we all started writing about video games and making websites and stuff, a podcast didn't exist. Exactly. If you had told me in 2001 when I was, you know,

starting college, going to get a writing degree and things like that, like, oh, you want to actually be doing this. What you'll be doing is essentially a radio show two or three times a week. I would have said, no, this is crazy. This isn't real. And then this is where we ended up in it. We found our calling, what the technology had to evolve while we were doing other things. So if you were feeling aimless, if you are feeling lost, perhaps the calling you are meant

for does not exist yet. That is very possible. Check back five years. It was weird for me because my uncle actually was a radio host in Toronto. So I was the one who followed in his footsteps, apparently. It's just weird, weird stuff. So, yes, just keep up on, you know, newest technologies. And as long as it's not Metaverse, you'll be fine, I think.

Don't plan on being a Metaverse start. We'll wrap up very soon. I'm going to pull out this question from Scuttle Punk. And Scuttle Punk says, it's a question for me, but everyone can answer this. I want to know what your thoughts are Diamond and Nadia. Bob questions says he's got the cartoon podcast. Oh, by the way, one thing I wanted to add to what, like, skills has being a podcaster given you, I know I've forgotten all practical information

And I know too much trivia about everything Just by virtue of having to learn it for podcasting I mean I knew a lot to begin with Just being an obsessed nerd about pop culture topics But now I often have the answer for people at parties or at gatherings And I have to apologize and say look I have a podcast This is why I know this but and then gently tell them what they're looking for Or gently correct someone in a helpful way

Not in a oh I'm surprised you don't know this kind of way So it's also given me that kind of brain sense sickness where a giant portion of my frontal lobe is just like video game and cartoon trivia. And I've forgotten how to like change a tire, how to pump gas, how to how to like boil certain things. It's all it's all video game knowledge. Yeah. But moving on to Scuttle Punk, they want to know favorite 80s, early 90s cartoon based on a video game. And I will say the bar is very, very low. It's pretty down there. It is down there. Yes. But I say by virtue of being like the actual thing it's based on.

The Legend of Zelda cartoon from that era is pretty okay if only for like the fact that they orchestrated all of the Zelda music and put it in the series. That was cool.

Yes, Link is a horny Steve Martin. That's true. But it's actually what you're watching on TV is like what you're playing in the game. It's not like the Mario Bros. Super show in which let's reenact the story of Cinderella,

but let's call it like Cupertella or whatever. It was so stupid. I didn't like that as a kid But yeah, the bar is very, very low And I think the Zelda cartoon Just barely clears it And that is my answer And I do recommend if you enjoy that cartoon

Look up the fan video I believe it's called The Legend of Beavis In which it takes Great It takes an entire Zelda cartoon And it replaces the voice of Link With perfect Beavis clips And just to pause the podcast

Pull over to the side of the road Look it up now, it's amazing Anyone want to jump in I'm sorry if I stole the only good answer, but I kind of think it is. You know, I don't have a lot of memories of those cartoons, but I would think for some reason, I remember watching the Pac-Man cartoon a lot. And I can't tell you if it is, if it is good, if it was good, I just remember being really into it and kind of being fascinated with, like, you know, because that's a game that has no story.

I'm sorry, you know, you can make up a story if you want, but like the game itself has no story. And they had to come up with a lot of ideas. Like, okay, so he's got a house and he's got a family. And the ghosts work for a giant half-robot man. I don't know. And the ghosts have to change your clothes a lot. Like, it was, I, yeah. So that cartoon has lived in the back of my mind for a long time.

I couldn't. If I rewatch today, who knows, I might burn my eyes out. But just based on pure recall, that show lingers. Noddy, how about you? Yeah, that's understandable. Because I remember that cartoon very well. I also remember Donkey Kong. Back when you were basing cartoons on old arcade games and old Tari games,

they didn't have a lot to work with. So they did their best for sure. I think Donkey Kong got a pass. Like, oh, few. We have characters. They can actually do something with this. But personally, my favorite, I will go ahead and say Zelda, Bob, but I can also add that I wouldn't interview Bob forward about the cartoon because he wrote

several of the episodes. And he kind of revealed that he had a thing for Tinkerbell, which is how he got Sprite being the sassital thing that she is. and yeah it was closer to the games than most of the other stuff as he said the Mario Super Mario Brothers Super show was let's reenact as he said Cinderella but Mario Brothers 3 was actually a lot better because it did go and into the game world

and I remember an episode with the burning sun and I thought it was so cool that oh well I know the burning sun that's so cool he's in this one thing that fascinates me about the Mario cartoons now though is that I didn't realize until many, many, many, many, many years later that so many, many, many, many years later that so many of those voice actors are, like, Canadians, some of them local Canadians, like, I grew up listening to King Cooper.

I'm King Cooper, this is my voice, man. Now, if you live in Southern Ontario, you get pegged incessantly with commercials for Leon's, a furniture store, and that is the same voice. And I never put that together when I was a kid. And that just made me crack up when I learned out who this guy was. I think he died, unfortunately. But, yeah, like, oh, I listen to the Leon's guy,

like in stereo for my entire life. Cool. Actually, that guy, his name is Harvey Atkin, and I know that because on the, on the day this goes live on Retronauts, on the Talking Simpsons Patreon, we're doing a what-a-cartoon episode about Sam and Max freelance police, the cartoon, and Harvey Atkin is the voice of Sam in that game. So weird coincidence here. Last question by Folex, who says, what gaming skills or possible advantages do you think gamers growing up in the 8-16-bit era acquired that pretty?

persist through to modern gaming. Well, for me, it's platforming. There was a time when, I think it was when the new Supermarver, this came out on the Wii or something like that. And I was at a little kid's house, like a cousin or something like that. And they were having trouble getting through the level. And I'm like, do, do, do, do. Just like going like a cheetah, just showing off.

And everyone's like, oh, and that was a big proud moment for me. I want to speak for my brother, though. I said it a little bit advanced. But we spent a lot of our teenage weekends at Laser Quest, which is like a laser, you know, thing and it was actually pretty pretty set up well like we had sniper towers and stuff so he learned very quickly how to shoot people and he got really good at early fpses because of it and actually recently my niece had her birthday at a laser tag place and he just annihilated all the six-year-olds and it was actually really fun yeah for me mostly is the platforming and

getting around RPGs as well I can find to have a good instinct for those how about you diamond you know I don't know if this is a great answer or not but I can say that that as someone who grew up playing a lot of 2D fighting games and then saw the 3D fighting boom sort of happened and everyone loved 3D fighting games, I don't feel like those skills necessarily translate over very well. So if you find yourself surrounded by people who love 3D fighting games, try to interest them to a 2D fighting game and watch them struggle with it. And then you can feel really good about yourself when you beat them a lot. That's been my experience. Take him down like axe kick. Just boom, right to the bar. Yeah. Just eat.

reclaim a bit of a bit of your confidence. And, you know, it doesn't have to be a good 2D fighting game. Just give it to them and watch them struggle with it as you as you pummel them. That's my advice. Take them apart piece by piece. What if they were six-year-olds you're playing against? I want all of these answers to be about dominating six-year-olds. Hey, all I can say is at a recent Thanksgiving party, my kids were playing Smash Bros.

And we don't, we don't own a copy Smash Brothers. So they were sort of figuring out as they go. But they had a good time with it. And then they're like, oh, Daddy, you play, you play. I was like, okay, okay, I'm not good to smash brothers, but I destroyed them, so. Awesome. That's what life's all about. Yes.

I will say, I mean, the stereotypical response is like, oh, yes, we had patience or whatever. But yes, I'm glad we have quicksaves and checkpoints and stuff, and that's great. I think the advantage that we have, being older folks, is that I feel like, at least with me, I have more of a tolerance for, quote, unquote, jank in games because I feel that that was pretty commonplace until recently. now most releases are these like AAA really polished like here's the last of us we made it a third time and it's even better but I'm playing I'm at the end of bayonet of three right now and I'm having so much fun it could be my game of the year but there is just enough jank in that game to be charming and to make me remember oh people made this and this part they couldn't spend that much time on it but I appreciate the fact that they're doing this with the game so I feel like just like a dash of jank reminds me that people made something and it gives things a bit of charm. I mean, not necessarily going as far as like deadly

premonition, which I do enjoy, but I think a lot of games are missing that like dash of jank. Like, I want to clip through things. I want things to not work out quite as well. I want things to be a little buggy. I like the human touch, in other words, I guess. I see where you're kind of fun for sure, yeah. So yes, that has been our 500 episode

celebration. Thanks for joining us to all of the host. And I guess I didn't write anything formal to say for this part, but I do want to thank everybody who supported us throughout the past nearly 10 whole years of podcasting independently. We couldn't have done this without you. Literally, we needed your money to buy things

and to buy bandwidth and to keep us alive. And retronauts is keeping me alive partially. Some organs are supported by retronauts. Let's say 30% of them. Don't turn it off. The rest are by Talking Simpsons. But yes, this podcast is still something I do as part of my full-time job.

And I do appreciate everybody that supports me. And yes, I want to do 500 more at the very least. and that is my promise to you. I will not stop as long as you keep listening. That is my promise to all of your listeners out there. So thanks again so much for being part of this. And like I said up front, we have outlasted the website OneUp, this independent run.

So that is saying something. And now I want to outlast every website. We will be the last thing standing on this planet. Cockroaches and the One Up Patreon. Sorry, the Retronauts Patreon. Before I wrap up with info about the show, Nadia and Diamond, Is there anything you want to plug outside of Retronauts?

Nadia, I know you've got a lot going on with Axe of the Blood God, that Patreon, and the podcast related to it. Yes, we have an Axe of the Blood God, which is an RPG podcast. We talked about RPG's old, new, eastern, western. You can find that at patreon.com forward slash blood God pod. We have a whole lot of content. We even have a Final Fantasy 14 podcast that's still under the Axe of the Blood God umbrella is called Charlie and Dropouts. If you like Final Fantasy 14, you might not listen to it. I think it's cool, but that's what I got for you.

I agree. Diamond, how about you? Geez, you know, I used to just plug my Twitter and Twitch, but let's be honest, I haven't streamed games in a long time. And who knows the Twitter will be live still when this podcast goes up? So I would say just in general, if you look up Fight Club, F-E-I-T, my last name, C-L-U-B, the English word, you can probably find me on most services. You know, I've got a link tree now linking to all the, Jesus, you know, co-host and Mastodon and Hive. Hive is now a thing? I've never heard a hive until I joined it. But I'm all over the internet and I think you'll find me, wherever the internet takes us, folks, you'll find

me there probably using the same name. As for Retronauts, you can find us online on Twitter. I think Twitter is going to be fine. That's just my own stance, but it's at Retronauts on Twitter, but of course, you can find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. And if you go there, if you sign up for three bucks a month, you get all these episodes one week at a time and at free. For five bucks a month, you get a lot more.

the $5 tier for all restaurants listeners because you get the early access but you also get so much more since the beginning of 2020 we have done two bonus episodes every month in their full length so those are for $5 patrons and up so if you are not

a patron you have missed that on nearly three years worth of exclusive episodes that is over 50 at this point so there's a lot of topics that you haven't heard if you sign up for five bucks a month you can hear all of those immediately and all the ones we do in the future as long as you remain a patron and you can also access all of Diamond's weekly

columns and podcasts as well so for five bucks a month sign up immediately you get access to a big catalog of stuff you haven't heard before and then future access as all that stuff goes live and again that supports all of what we're doing here and it's all happening at patreon.com slash retronauts and our Discord too

that's right we have a discord and everyone there is very very friendly and it's a good place to hang out and chat and occasionally the host will come in and yell at you but only if you're rude and as for me you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. You've heard me mention it before, but I do a lot of podcasting outside of Retronauts. There's a Talking Simpsons podcast. It's a chronological exploration of the Simpsons.

There's what a cartoon. We talk about a different cartoon from a different series every month. And that's all happening at wherever you find podcast or you can go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons support us there for five bucks a month to get early access, but also access to all of our exclusive mini series. And right now, as you're listening to this, we are covering Batman the animated series. We're doing season two of Blabin' About Batman. We're covering our, our, second set of favorite episodes from that series. It's happening throughout the end of 2020, but of course you signed up for five bucks a month.

You can hear all of season one, as well as podcasts about The Critic and Mission Hill and Futurama and King of the Hill. And that's all happening at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. That's it for us, folks. Thanks for listening for the past 500 episodes. And again, here is to 500 more episodes of Retronauts. We'll see you next time.

Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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