Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 78: Retronauts' 10th Anniversary Live from PRGE 2016

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

It's hard to believe, but the podcast devoted to discussing old games is now old itself! On this special live episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Chris Kohler, and special guest Scott Sharkey as the crew discusses a decade spent stuck in the past. (Special thanks to twitter user @RPeavyhouse for the cover photo!) Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronaut. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and I'm here with a little preamble to let you know what you're about to listen to. So the following is a recording of our Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2016 panel, which was a celebration of the 10th anniversary of Retronauts. And unfortunately, this is sort of a disclaimer because the audio on this episode is a little lower quality than I would like. What was supposed to happen was we were supposed to get the direct audio captured directly from the microphone sitting in front of us. But after reaching out a few times, no one really was responding to me, and I'm not holding against anyone from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. I'm sure it's a labor of love. I'm sure they have a lot to deal with after the Expo closes, and I'm sure maybe later I can grab the real great audio off of the YouTube version of that panel, because they should be uploading a YouTube version of our entire Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2016 panel at some point in time. For now, though, you're going to have to put up with my personal recording of this panel.

I basically put a handheld recorder in front of me and Jeremy, turned it on, and hope for the best. And actually, it turned out pretty good. I would give it a 7 out of 10 on the review scale, which, thankfully, this is not a video game, because that would be the worst score you could ever get. So I feel like this is still pretty listenable, but if you listen to our episodes while you're, you know, in a car or jogging or doing something with some background noise, I would save this one until you're home and can put on some headphones and listen to it, because, again, it's not as good as I want it to be, but it's still very listenable. And I may do some things throughout the episode to sweeten the audio a bit.

I may actually record some new audio to let you know what some of our Q&A panel was about because you might not be able to hear the questions as loud because those people were maybe 20 or 30 feet away from the mic, and it barely picked them up. So, again, I think you're going to be surprised by how good this turned out with just the paltry equipment I had just sitting in front of me. but again, I wish we can get that good audio. One day we will have it, but I did not want to miss a week, and I think this is perfectly listenable, and you'll get the gist of our panel,

and I think it turned out pretty well. So before I go and let you listen to this panel, I just want to let you know that we really appreciate all of your donations through patreon.com. We were able to go to the panel, stay in Portland for a few days, thanks to you, and it was personally very, very, very, very gratifying to meet so many great Retronauts fans at our meetup and Quarterworld. Thank you so much if you came up to say hi to me.

I had so many great conversations. I spent two nights in a row, a quarter world, and I did not play a single video game because I was busy talking to fans of retronauts and talking Simpsons and watch out for fireballs. It was probably the best time I had in Portland,

so if you missed it or missed any of our Portland appearances, please try to come out there next year. Start saving now because I feel like that is one of the best, or not the best retro gaming conventions in the world, and Portland is so great, such a great place to go, such a great place to hang out for a weekend. So, yeah, thank you again if you donate to us,

And if you're interested in donating to the show, as I've said many, many times, we do everything via patreon.com. It completely funds everything we do. We don't take any profits personally just because we can barely afford to fund a show and panels and all of our extra stuff like t-shirts and stickers and posters. But if you're interested in contributing,

just a dollar a month would really help us out a lot. And you can go to patreon.com slash retronauts to do that. Anyhow, I will go and let you listen to this panel. Next week will be a little sort of post-panel episode with Gary Butterfield and Cole Ross from Watch Offer Fireballs. We're going to be talking about the podcasting game, our experience in Portland and things like that. And then we'll be back to our normal schedule talking about actual video games for once. This may seem self-indulgent for a few weeks, but let us have this victory lap at the very least, and we promise to do at least

10 more, although I don't swear on that because who knows what could happen in the next 10 years, but I just want to keep making these episodes, guys. So thanks so much for listening, and please enjoy this panel. So, hello. joining us for the Retronaut's 10th Anniversary Panel. Thank you. Thank you. So before I begin, I want to talk about the date of October 4th, 2006.

It was a momentous date in world history. So number one, WikiLeaks was formed. Really? Yes, and it would go on to... Which is an anniversary with WikiLeaks? Yes, we do. And we're just as... It could have been us.

We're just as potentially dangerous. But WikiLeaks would go on to inform us that people who make Adam Sandler movies don't like Adam Sandler either. Adam Sandler either. On October 4, 2006, the TV show Lost would officially begin its third season, amounting to the best possible year for a series that would ultimately disappoint billions. And President Bush signed the Department of Homeland Security... We don't be disappointed in thousands. And the last thing that happened was President Bush signed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which will probably get one of us on

stage arrested one day. But most importantly, October 4th, 2006 was the first retronauts ever that launched that day, and you are all here to help us celebrate it. I'm just here for street passes, so thank you for coming. So, Tintrus, everybody, I am your host for this panel, Bob Mackie. Next to me is the great Jeremy Parish, and we also have Chris... Well, a 7 out of 10. I'm not pregnant, currently. You're glowing, Jeremy.

And we also have Chris Kohler. And our... He's spectacular. Uncanny even. And our last surprise guest is Scott Sharkey. Come on down. He has been risen from the Lazarus Pitts to join us. I'm not sure where he went or why he's here.

But he's here and we're all happy. And he's here to talk to us about retronauts. We're going to share stories. This is a very disorganized panel because we're slightly disorganized people in our own way. But first, I really want to talk about the origin of retronauts. And this is really just like Uncle Jeremy tell me a story. I think we're all going to take turns sitting in his lap for the next 45 minutes. So I hope you wore lobearing pants, Jeremy. I didn't really sign up for that. So Jeremy, maybe you can tell us just where retronauts came from. I'm curious. I know

it was part of the one-ups initiative to make podcasts. When podcasts were a new thing, when Mark Marin was just a twinkle in the eye of the podcasting God. Where did retronauts come from? It was forged in the fires of Mount Zip Davis. That's very much like mortar. Yeah, it's pretty much the same. Actually, Zip Davis might be more evil. I mean, there wasn't just a fire in the Zip Davis building, right? Oh, it wasn't nobody could really put out.

I was nowhere near that. It was that in the nest? It probably was. It's been smoldering since I left. Wow, it's like old times. Yeah, so, man, I don't know. I'm actually the person who started the show. show, but I don't remember any of that because I don't see any of it. I remember I was in the

one-up office for some reason or another because I was probably writing a review or collecting some review copy. Chris, why don't you tell me how I started this? This is very much an oral history now. Like, I just, I very clearly remember you saying, yeah, so I mean, we're going to start this podcast, which again, in 2006, I was kind of like, we're going to talk into a microphone, and then you're going to upload it, and people are going to listen to this, like voluntarily. like a radio show but not on the radio and you were just like yeah it's going to be called you know right for naught and it's going to be entirely about you know old classic 80 1816 mid video games and I was just like I want to go to there and I was

just like Jeremy I would really really like to do this and I think that he's like yeah no no I mean I assume you'll be a regular contributor so I'm like ah yeah so at the time like everyone has said retro podcasts were a pretty new idea but one-up Zip Davis had been kind of an early innovator in that space online and especially for video gaming Jane Pinkert who was our news editor for a little while I think in 2005 or so started something called I want to say like one up weekly or something around table that she did no it was before the roundtable it was just like someone would sit in her office with her and just think two the two of them would talk into a

microphone I was on one episode pretty early on and from that it kind of expanded into the roundtable and then Garnet Lee took it over and it became you know the proper one-up yours or whatever was called it's all like I said it's all very blurry to me because there were so many people and so many different names and I was only kind of tangentially involved but you know the magazines that Ziv Davis had under the same banner as one-up EGM official PlayStation magazine computer gaming world and later games for Windows magazine they all started doing their own podcasts, which they all grumbled about it, that was stupid.

They were like, who cares? But they didn't get that it was a chance for, you know, the staffs of those magazines to get together and communicate their personalities and their chemistry in a way that, you know, just online print production doesn't do. And so these became really popular by the metrics of video game websites in 2005, which, you know, the internet was a smaller place back then. So it was relatively popular compared to now. Not that big a deal.

But anyway, no one cared about all the video games except me, so I was like, I want to do one, too. And I figured it would last about three episodes. So I just called it Retronauts because that was a retrogaming blog I'd been running on my personal site and then moved over to One Ups blogs. And I didn't bother to think of a better name for it because, again, it was going to last for three episodes or so,

and then everyone would stop carrying and it would go away. But then it just kind of kept going. So, Bob, October 4th, was that when the first episode was recorded, Was that the first podcast episode? Was that the Metroid episode that was done on video? The history of Retronauts is kind of like biblical history. No one really knows for sure what happened, except for, you know, scholars, and I am not one.

But that was the first date it was posted. And I know there was a Retronauts episode zero about Metroid 2. And there was something about Donkey Kong, too? I mean, do you remember these things? They were videos first. I remember the Metroid video. Was Donkey Kong part of that? Sharky, wasn't there yet?

I was there. And Nadia Oxford was on a Skype. You were a camera for some reason. I was like trying to avoid those, so it's still kind of sore. Yeah, originally it was there was podcast and video kind of, they were both happening at the same time, right? No, the idea was to have podcast and video happen at the same time, but we did that zero episode and realized, oh, this is really unwieldy

and there's a lot of trouble. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I mean, I just stopped doing it. it's that asshole Scott Sharkey unfortunately there's no smoking in here so we can't videos were happening right it wasn't like the podcast for a few years and then there was video

like there were retronauts podcasts and there were retronauts videos really from the beginning the videos came a little later the bonus stage stuff was like 2007 so that was pretty early that was like months later that's years in internet time

November 4th 2006 was a Saturday so we didn't record it then That would have been when we put it up, I guess. No, October report. Oh, October report. Oh, no, I'm going. No, I think we recorded it a day or two before that and posted it. It was Final Fantasy 3.

That's right. Yeah, time to go with the DS version was coming out. Yeah. The important thing about, like, the first two years of any podcast, it sounds like everyone is half asleep and afraid to say anything. And that is the truth about retronauts. I mean, it was like one of the first podcasts I ever listened to when I stuck with it.

but if you go back to any old podcast, everyone is so low energy, it's kind of funny. Not me. Except for Chris. Chris is... I took the podcast, I can duck to water, man. I still don't even understand what the podcast is. But I know you put the microphone in front of me, I'm like,

if you look at the waveform of any retronauts, you can see when Chris is talking. Yeah. Yeah, one of my enduring memories of retronauts is that our producer, Andrew Vister, anytime Chris started talking, you'd see him with adjusting dial. But, you know, this was... the era at Zip Davis and these magazines where it was like drinking was not this

discouraged it was encouraged at work so maybe everyone was just half drunk on these episodes except Jeremy no that's just how I am okay I don't think there was any drinking during retronaut that was more of a garden league okay oh no I was pretty much professionally half yeah I mean you weren't being on the show you drink you drank heavily before the show yeah I was a functional alcoholic yeah very functional hiber liquid by the way oh congratulations Yay. Okay, so anyway, that's how it started.

Let's talk about something weird and exciting. Is there anything weird and exciting about? What's weird and exciting? Well, I think a lot of people here want to know what it was like, including me, because I got in kind of late, what it was like to just exist in that sphere of the games press when it was more of a burgeoning force in the world, when it had more of a presence.

The thing about retronauts is we get a few complaints about having limited subject matter, One of the key reasons Retronaut started was you had an entire, you know, building full of people who could speak about anything conceivably. This was back when websites had things called staff and not just a bunch of freelancers they would underpaid. Yes, oh my God. Instead of having one guy that, you know, records video, records audio, edits text, edits photos, etc. But I think like me, I idealized that time in the Games Press because I was trying to get in then, too. I didn't really get in until like the last gas with that era when there were a lot of sites, when there were still magazines.

And I think, like, if you guys are anything like me, I do want to hear what it was like in that time, because I want to find a time machine and go back to there. I would like to find a time machine and go back there also. I think actually everyone sort of who comes into an industry or a business like this sort of sees what happened before is more of a golden era. Because I feel like I missed out on the cool stuff.

I read like that crazy next level.com thread about game fan and like people doing cocaine and playing you. and playing Yoshi's Island. I think it was acid. Looker at E3, and I'm like, wow, that is not at all the experience I had in video games. What's that? The game cock parties, where it was like Cirque de Soleil. Yeah, like all of that stuff kind of happened and was coming to an end as I was entering the games press.

Like the day that I started at OneUp.com was, I believe, the very last time that Zip Davis had a staff cruise where the whole company went on of like a cruise ship off the coast of San Francisco and just sailed around and drank for a day. Like that happened the day before I started. And I mean, you know, the global economy crashed in 2008, right? And so the video game industry, all the lavish parties also kind of went away. Right. So there was like five years that I was in there before, like, you know, starting to fade away a little bit.

And basically print was starting to go away. And print was very lucrative for a long time. And that began to be replaced by Internet, which is much less lucrative. So, you know, Zip Davis was a magazine publisher, had a bunch of magazines, everyone in the magazines kind of looked at OneUp.com as like this sort of upstart that was trying to siphon off their resources and stealing their exclusives and things like that. They didn't quite get that it was, you know, the future. And then by the time they did realize it was the future, there was a different sort of bitterness. So I always kind of felt like an outsider at Zip Davis a little bit until the point where the magazines went away and everyone became. one up at which point like we were all part of one big family but that took like

five or six years so yeah the podcasts were part of that time so there was definitely this sense of like a territorial sense with each little magazine or publication being its own kingdom that sort of jealously guarded in secrets and its exclusives and its interviews but there also was sharing and like as a as a company everyone hung out and was friendly it was just you know sort of on the business side, there was that suspicion. But the podcasts were, I think, one of the things that helped break that down, because even though they didn't really make us money, and, you know, they got like 5,000, 6,000 downloads, I don't know the exact numbers, but, like, Retronauts

Today gets more, a lot more downloads than it did 10 years ago or 7 years ago or whatever. Or, you know, even though that was like a small sort of slice of the business that didn't really have any profits to it, there was that sense of community that emerged. You know, on the one-up boards and places like NeoGaf, people started to download these podcasts and realize, hey, there's like these cool people talking about video games and they're sharing information and sharing anecdotes and, you know, breaking embargoes maybe a little bit. And they, you know, it started to become this sort of valuable community building tool. So I think podcasts did help sort of break that down. I don't know that Retronauts did because it wasn't tied specifically to a publication under, unlike, you know, EGM's podcast or OPM's podcast. I think it was advertised in EGM, though, right?

It was advertised over there, but, I mean, it wasn't tied to a publication. So it was kind of like the floater podcast. But that was why it was great was because, you know, as if Davis at the time did have a staff of like 40 people, a lot of whom had been in the games press since the 90s and had all this experience. They had been through, you know, like to every E3 so far. They had been through the weird kind of golden era

of the PlayStation and they had all these bizarre experiences with breaking Nintendo Indie As and you know, having to deal with lawsuits and stuff like that. And they just had experience. They knew the video games we were talking about because they played them, they wrote about them sometimes. and it was just a great opportunity to pull on this this amazing pool of resources that was there

had one up and the company and just say like hey you know a lot about Pokemon you wrote a strategy guide on Pokemon come be in our Pokemon episode and video game journalism at that point was not did not reflect back on what had come before it was very much about like news previews review repeat and it was all about what's coming next what's next what's next and you never saw stories about what had happened before and so you're kind of

missing the fruits of all of that experience and being able to reflect on things not to mention the fact there just really wasn't a lot of media out there about old video games at that point it was very much an experience i forget about that i was like the weird ass freak who kept writing about old video games and people it was like us and like the structoid had retro force go at this kind of at the same time would you really would you really call out like virtual console as the one thing that made this more of a mainstream topic and what sort of launch... Did he was something we talked about that was now? Yeah.

I think just in general there has been sort of a move toward nostalgia as, you know, video games have moved kind of in their own direction and, you know, toward the big package AAA games. And so that's left the idea of sort of classic video games as its own thing. And I think, you know, there's like the rise of AAA games and the rise of Indies who look back to Super Metroid or Mario or Sonic or, you know, Fantasy Star and say, that's the kind of game that I loved and that's the kind of game I always wanted to make, so I'm going to make that game.

So I think it's been a lot of factors that are probably just inevitable as an medium ages and matures. The same way, you know, people in the, I don't know, the 80s loved their big band, showstopper Hollywood movie productions from the 40s. I don't know. Well, that's something that recurs over and over again. That's the point of nostalgia, especially with, like, a cohort of young adults who are just leaving home, maybe encountering new people for the first time.

The one thing they have in common with everybody is, like, their trashy pop culture, and they're like, oh, God, you remember Thundercats? And you're kind of doing the same thing. It was, like, do you remember Kid Icarus and how busted that was? And I still never got the hang on that. Yeah, we all have very, I mean, you know, you start trying out, everybody has a very different story about their childhood and how they interacted with these games and when it's they get this game, you get this game when it came out,

and did you have to wait until your birthday next year before you got it? I always loved, like, well, obviously, Jen Frank's stories were always amazing, and the central theme of her stories was that her adoptive parents wouldn't let her have video games, but they did not consider computer games to be video games, and they did not consider Game Boy

to be video games. So Jen was an expert on Sierra, you know, point-click games. She was an expert on Metroid 2 Return of Sammis, and she had a total knowledge gap for any console in between those two things. So we're coming up on the Q&A section soon, and I want to ask everybody just what your favorite memories of the show is, because for me, I think, I just remember any project I like as a project where I think I'm getting away with something,

and that was always true of retronauts, especially when we were working with an IGN, and it was like they were becoming YouTube partners and building a new studio. And meanwhile, I was in the podcast studio recording a podcast about the Kunio Kuhun Games with Ray Barnholz. So I took a bit of hipster pride, maybe too much.

And, again, it always felt like I had a rare luxury to do this, so I always took pride in doing it. Do you guys have any specific memories of your favorite times on the show? I loved meeting, you know, Ron Gilbert, doing podcasts with Tim Schaefer and Dave Grossman about my favorite game day the tentacle, just getting the chance to meet and talk to people that I would never encounter

outside of this industry. I always treasure those moments. I don't know. Do you focus up any memories of the show that you really treasure? I think I always enjoyed the show most when I wasn't hosting it and wasn't, didn't have to do all the heavy lifting and planning and production. So, like, when Frank Sefaldi brought in a bunch of Tengen people, that was amazing because all of them had great anecdotes, and I didn't have to do a thing.

I just got to sit there and listen to, you know, people who, we're part of this fascinating slice of history, you know, like creating unlicensed games for the NES behind Nintendo's back and really getting away with something, just sharing their experiences. And yeah, like, that sort of thing was always, it didn't happen enough in my opinion, but when it did happen, it was amazing.

And I'd love to being there for that. I really kind of enjoyed half-assing it a few times. I never really had a plan, never really printed out a script for the show or anything, but a few times I did do it. kind of went off the rails. People love the survival horror episode, Sharkey. I always hear that.

That was impossible to edit. It was just people coming and going and we were stuck in a closet and like the power went out at one point and at the time I actually had to edit this thing together to something cogent. It ended up like pulp fiction by the end. Isn't it?

It was more momentum than a podcast. But I had fun doing it. It was a great environment to be in for that too because everybody did have an area of expertise and there's a good chance that somebody who wanted to talk about whatever you were talking about would just pop in the door and it was just just perfect having all those people in easy access yeah I mean in addition to people working at Davis we also had freelancers like Chris and you know just

people that we knew in the community who we could call on and would would happily come in and join us so there was a real we were incredibly fortunate and I didn't really appreciate that at the time but I would I would kill to be able to create a podcast like this in that environment again, it could be so good now that I have so much more experience and so much more maturity to really, like, get a handle on it. So I feel, you know, maybe this isn't a good memory, but I do feel like the old retronauts was a little bit of a wasted opportunity, and that's a shame, but maybe inevitable.

But you're saying that you finally appreciate you now. Yes. So, before we go on to our Q&A session, I want to talk about, oh, we have more stories? Oh, Chris. I don't remember any of it. I remember you played Donkey Kong briefly. What? You played Donkey Kong briefly?

Yeah. I was thinking about that. I wish we had the clip. I wish we could just roll the clip. It's buried on one-up in their proprietary video format, whatever that was. Like, yeah. We shot this funny video where I was throwing barrels. Oh, I remember this now.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I will try to include this in the blog post if I can find it. Yeah. Whoops. Should have found it. Sorry. to end our talk amongst ourselves with just asking everybody, like, why we do the show, like what we're trying to get out of it. I really discover why I do the show through talking

to people who I meet, like, after panels like this and, you know, getting comments and things like that. I mean, I got a question from someone last night, and they were like, oh, how do you know all this stuff? And I was like, well, a very, very lonely childhood up until probably my mid-20s. But part of the reason is, like, I have all this stuff in my brain and it needs to get out. in order for me to feel better. So it's kind of therapy. But another reason that I like to do the show is podcasts are there for me in my most boring times of my life. And hearing people talk about queuing up lots of retronauts, like for an eight-hour car drive or when they're going through something or when they're flying, like, if I know that I can be there to entertain someone when they're bored, I get a lot out of that.

I love hearing that. Jeremy, like, how do you feel like what do you get out of the show? What is your kind of goal with the show? That's a great question. You know, it's weird because I don't listen to podcasts, and this isn't some snobbish thing. It's just like that medium doesn't interest me if I'm going to listen to something,

then it needs to be music. That's got to be prog rock, right, Jeremy? Yes. You got to slide into a beanbag chair and... No, no, 80's new wave and video games. Speaking to your X, I still have one of your old iPod shuffles full of prog rock. Oh, yeah?

It's just like bandagraph generator and shit. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I gave that to you. Oh, thanks. George. Did you enjoy Bounderg generator? Very much. Great. You guys listen to BounderGrav Generator. Yeah, so, no, I'm pretty much always writing or working on something, so podcasts are really distracting for that, so I don't listen to them myself. But I know a lot of people do,

and they seem to enjoy the podcasts that I work on, so I'm happy to keep making them, because it's not really that difficult to just kick back in the studio and talk about a video game for an hour and a half. I mean, there's a lot of research that goes into it and then there's production, but like... But talking is easy. Yeah, you know, versus writing an equivalently sized retrospective, it's a lot easier to just talk. It doesn't require video production, so yes, the opportunity cost, exactly. So it's an easy way to just kind of, you know, get information about classic video games out there. And the name retronauts always kind of spoke to my ambition for the show.

and for the blog they came before it, which was... Going into space. That's a new Patreon goal. I wanted an excuse to explore video games that I had never had a chance to play before. And that hasn't always... Actually, that's really rarely happened because I have a lot of other responsibilities.

So retronauts tends to be me falling back on things that I know. But I am making a real effort these days to venture into new areas and spend some time with episodes on topics that I don't know that well. And that's actually something that I'm, we'll talk about in a little bit, that I'm really determined to kind of double down on in the new year. But, you know, it's a chance for me to explore areas of video game history that I don't know because there are lots of them.

And hopefully to enlighten people on, you know, the things that I've learned over time or that I have researched and discovered as I, you know, put together a new episode. So, Chris, I know you're not like a core retronaut. You're, like, sort of the peep best of the retronauts. Like, what do you get out of the... Why, get out? You weren't fired for Ringo, but... He's our regular session guitars. Okay, sure.

He's part of the wrecking crew. So, like, why do you enjoy being on retronauts, and what do you get out of it? Why do you enjoy being on retronauts? I just said what I... Bye. Yeah, so probably the same. Same thing?

That's plagiarism, Chris. No, I... Yeah, I mean, it's talking about... about old video games with this group of people, I mean, that's not something I could replicate on my own. So, I mean, yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of old streaming these with podcasts and stuff. I've seen it. I made, I made co-hosts out of old gin boxes. I don't feel right.

You're down a boxed gin. So, Shark, do you have anything to move on to anybody else want to do. So, uh, Shark, do you have anything to say? Nope. Okay. I guess we're going to move on. Anybody else want I do. So basically, none of us actually enjoyed the show.

I do. I love everybody. Let's go on to Q&A. I guess maybe, like, form a line that won't cause a fire hazard, and we'll take you one at a time until we're out of time. We've got about 15 minutes. So please try to make your question snappy. Oh, my goodness. Ooh. I just want to be really, yeah, I just want to talk to you guys and say that a question is a, if you've not heard of one before. A question is a short sentence that has ended with a question. Yes. If we diagram it, it should be just one straight line. But yes, hello. Hi, one of my favorite things about retronauts is all of Jeremy's voices. Can we get a toad voice, please?

You know, I really hate to say this, but in the past few years my voice has really just like lost its range. It's part of getting old. I'm really sorry. So no! Yay! Yay! Yes. So you've covered a lot of topics over the 10 years that you've done retronauts. Is there any topic that you've just really wanted to get?

to, but I've just never been able to cover despite of all these things you've tried. Did we ever do one on the Spectrum? We did have Jazz Rignall come in, because who better to speak about the Spectrum than Jazz Rignal? I'm going to say I'm really biased against Sierra Games, but they deserve an episode, so I really would like to do that. But they always

just shove me away when I try to play them, but I will try to do something about them soon. That's really my goal. I'll be on that episode. Oh, cool. I'd love to do a lot more looks at Apple II software. I know we've kind of touched a little bit on some of that, but there's a lot in the Apple II realm that really deserves more coverage. Yes.

Can you guys talk a little bit about the theme music for Retronaut? It's one of my favorite things about the show. Oh, thanks. I think there's two or three different themes that have come along through the years. We talk about that. Oh, sure. Well, the newer theme from 2013 onward is from Anamonoguchi.

We contacted them. They wrote us original song. That was a Kickstarter goal. That was Kickstarter goal, yeah. So they wrote that for us, and I think it's great. It's really fast-paced and catchy. I never get tired of it. Jeremy, who did the original song?

That was Lena Chappelle. She's a composer, I think, works in some games now. But at the time, she was just kind of a fan of one-up and was sort of getting her start in the industry. And I think I met her through Jen Frank. But at any rate, like, she, Oh, no, actually, sorry, she did the theme for... Act of Time Babel.

The first Retronauts theme, crap, what was his name? His handle on one-up was Cyrannix. I don't remember his actual name, and I feel really bad about that. We'll find out before you post this. Yeah. Okay, yeah, but I think I just put a call out and said, hey, is anyone interested in doing a theme? And a few people sent in samples, and I hope we gave him money,

but I really don't know. Anyway, it was a good theme. I liked it. Yeah. Yes. Has there ever been one particular episode that got more hate mail than anything else? Or something?

Oh. Oh. Master System did, but also the Genesis episode where we were in a hotel in Tokyo. A bunch of us gathered around, and it was the 20th anniversary of Genesis, I think, or 15th, 20th. And you spent the whole time talking about how terrible it was.

that got a lot of hate mail actually people seem to not like me for some reason that I don't understand none of you of course no one stabbed me on the way out but my episode I did about video game violence or the mini episode after that where we looked at a fluffy news magazine piece

that was basically like a Nintendo promotional piece and it had an always cranky John Stossel on it and I made some lighthearted jokes at his expense and I got like these insane 2,000 word screeds sent at me, and people still reference it. People are still leaving iTunes reviews, talking about how terrible we are for it. Because we're not fair in balance or something, I don't

know, but there's going to be a sequel to that one soon that I'll get more hate from, so look forward to that. There was the Stonic Collin episode, which kind of was his own name. People love that one, Jeremy. No, that episode itself was its own haymail. It drove me away for years.

Hi. Hi, so I've been listening since that October 4 episode. So this is awesome. Thanks for coming. I'm wondering what your kind of like N64 kid moment was. Like what was the, when you were a kid, the Christmas or the birthday or something, the game or system that you got that was like, you know, just pure joy. It's not a video game, but I got Eternia for the Masters of the Universe play set that was like this thing. lost my freaking mind

in my five-year-old mine because I sold it like a great-school or? No, it was literally there was a big tower in the center and there was a gray skull shit. There were three towers connected by a tram that was motorized and all is crazy stuff.

Oh, it's worth of a billion dollars now. Yeah, that's not a video game. I think mine was just getting an NES because it wasn't a birthday or Christmas. This is going to be sad when my parents got divorced when I was very small. And my grandma just got me in Nintendo because, you know, love... Toys can replace love very easily.

And I carried that with me throughout life. So just getting an NES out of nowhere, this thing I sort of, like, drooled over for years in, like, 1988. That was a huge thing for me and sort of set me down this dark path that I'm on now. I always had to buy my own video game systems, so I didn't have that moment of, like, unexpectedly... You've always been old. What was Vietnam like, Jeremy? I don't know as well. I'll tell you about my wound sometime.

No, but I think the first time I saw Nintendo 64 in a store kiosk and it had Super Mario 64 playing on it, I was like, how is this possible? This, I mean, I'd, you know, played some PlayStation games before that, but this was something else. It was amazing. So, yeah, that still sticks in my memory. Thanks for coming. I'm trying to think of a specific video game.

You know, I was a goblet for the Comptower 64. Really? I was obsessed with that arcade machine. And it was the one time I just stole money. To speak down to the bar and play gone. So the fact that there was a home version that actually had all the on-screen stuff, you know, I was really impressed. You got to feed that wizard, man.

You got to feed that wizard. Yeah, basically. But I did finally get it, and I was thrilled to death, and it didn't work. It just wouldn't load. I was heartbroken. It wasn't until a week later, maybe I should try on plugging the fast load cartridge, and then it was fine. So it kind of ruined my Christmas morning.

It would be for a nice New Year's. Hello. Hi. One of the cool things about listening to you guys over the course of this 10 years is to see your opinions on certain games or kind of games evolve over time, maybe in your appreciation or enjoyment of them.

So what I was wondering is what game or kind of game do you guys each feel your opinion has changed most drastically about? Silence. Still think Donkey Kong country is pretty mediocre. I've gained an understanding of Zelda, too. I still find it hates me, but at least I know why. So I'm not as just volatile and angry about it as it used to be.

You've discovered it's the Dark Souls of Zelda. I'm not allowed to say that about anything anymore. I'm not your boss anymore, so you're free. Yes, it is the Dark Souls of Zelda. Except Dark Souls is good, so never mind. I mean, I've always, when I was a teenager, I brought Earthbound when it came out when I was, you know, 15. And I liked RPGs, but at the time, I was just kind of like, you know, I don't mean the graphics, not really doing it for me. I hate the inventory system, you know, and I was pretty kind of impatient.

And I said, yeah, you know, some people like this, people hate it. I'm kind of in the middle. It's okay. I think the older I get every year that passes, I like it more because I just replayed it on virtual console. and I just, it's so, it's so peaceful, you know, it's so beautiful, such a beautiful game that in my mid-30s I appreciated so much more than I did 20 years ago. I'm going to say Game Boy. I liked handheld games a lot when I first started at OneUp, but I kind of looked out on Game Boy, and in fact, I got to know Jin Frank because I wrote a really scathing review at Metroid 2, like a retro review, and she left a comment that was like,

you're terrible, how could you think of this? And from there we became great friends. And yeah, like I just remember thinking, oh, there's not much good on Game Boy, like the system was just too primitive to be entertaining. And now I devote most of my free time to chronicling the Game Boy. So there's actually quite a bit of good stuff out there.

Also a lot of total trash, but that's true for any system. So, yeah, Game Boy is definitely the area of gaming that my opinion has changed the most, I would say. I can't play MMOs anymore. My God, I've just done with them. I don't know. I used to be like, you have to take all your devices. Pretty much, yeah.

Did you ever really play MMOs, or did you just different out of the character? I still do that. OK. I don't even have the pretence of trying to play them anymore. I'm just making like terrible, terrible creatures. OK. OK.

OK. I remember going to your house and playing two worlds, which not any at all. You're playing two rows, and you're like, I have to show you this, and you go down and, like, this guy at a ranch, and he's like, the horses got out of the coral. So they were seahorses, that. Don't we stingy that there?

Don't be stingy? I'm supposed to stingy. Yeah. You think that's right around. Last alert? Last alert. Yeah. Thank you.

That's your question and several other questions. Hello. Hi. So my roommate curates a blog dedicated to a retro like game creation system called ZZT. And he said to you here specifically to ask you, Chris, about, yeah, about if you could, you know, share anything about your Yoshi ZZT game? Yeah. What do you want to know? Yeah, so when I was like 13, seventh grade, I kind of discovered ZCT, which is the first game that was made by Epic, Epic Games.

Tim Sweeney made it himself and had an editor. Ananthropy has written a wonderful book about DECA. And I was just like, I was not original. So when I was in like sixth grade, at six, seven, and eighth grade or so, I actually drew horrifically bad comics, like in class, like with Yoshi as the star and kind of like developed this whole thing where Yoshi,

I don't know how it happened, but like, Yoshi became like this huge idiot. And the joke was that he was really stupid, really stupid, and it was him versus Princess Toad Soul, constantly having a friendly rivalry. I don't know why that became the funny thing. Sounds very much like SuperRite, too. Yeah, yeah, it was just like the characters going off in a really weird place with them. And then when DCT came around, I was like, oh, okay, I wouldn't do these Yoshi comics,

so I really should do a game about Yoshi. And so all the stuff in those Yoshi games is, like, the personalities that they had in the comic, but of course, it made absolutely no sense to anyone if you weren't me, and it's just, like, it's just bizarre, you know, like, all. weird reality Mario world thing with lots of toilet humor and some terrible season too yeah yeah yeah it was yeah exactly yeah I was I was the Sonichu guy basically just completely ridiculous things and you know and of course it's self-insert fan fiction because that's the only it's the best kind of fan fiction so like you know

I'm mom in there all my seven-year-old seventh grade friends are in there oh they just you'll never see them never you'll never see them of your parents garage? At it. Adam. Okay. Yeah, so that's Yoshi games. Thank you. And, of course, like, you can't.

Yeah, the internet has a forever memory, so literally you can go and play these games and made when I was 13. They're all on ZCT websites and stuff. And of course, they're immortalized because Anna Andrews you wrote about them in the ZCT bunk. Cool, thank you.

That's our last question, actually, that we have a few announcements to make. There's some cross talk happening. You can find us. at Retronauts.com, of course. I take it. I assume everyone here has heard our show before. Has no one heard our show before? Wow, thank you. I'm sure all this is very confusing to you. So, thanks for coming. And I do want to say that we have an announcement, but we're all supported by Patreon. We're here because of Patreon. So if you give, thanks so much.

It's patreon.com slash Retronauts. There's rewards if you want to give to us. And we basically do the show based on that alone, so we can't be here without that. So if you give to us and you're here, thanks so much. And I think Jeremy has a Patreon-related announcement to make. Yeah, like I said earlier, I really want to kind of double down in 2017, on 2017. We are going back in time. We're going retro, really retro, on topics that I've never, we've never explored before because it's something we don't have a lot of knowledge about, maybe.

So I'd like to take the podcast weekly, which means that we're going to hopefully start up a Retronauts East where I'm going to meet with people that I know where I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, who have a lot of knowledge about vintage PC games, Apple 2, Atari, things like that, areas that retro-renouses never explored. So we've set kind of a new Patreon goal for ourselves, and hopefully we can meet that, and it's going to take additional funding because I'd like to pay these people for their time, and if we do record more frequently, then I'll be traveling to San Francisco more frequently to record Bob. So, yeah, so it's a little extra investment requirements on our part, but yeah, that's something I really want to do.

It's an area that Retronauts has always been sort of weakened, you know, these pretty other topics. So it's kind of a bit of a long-term goal, and I'd like to realize that in the new year. So hopefully everyone can help out. If not, that's okay, too. We'll do our best. It till it hurts. Yes.

So we have to go now, but thanks for coming. I'm going to say 10 more years. I'm promising that now in audio form. So Jeremy, you're stuck here. we'll be a quarter world tonight at 8 p.m., so we'll see you there. And thanks for coming to the panel, everybody.

Appreciate it. And we'll be outside if you want to talk. I'm gonna be the same the I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm and I'm

I'm We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm not I'm going to

I'm going to I'm I'm I'm I'm going to I'm I'm going I'm

I'm I'm I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.