retronauts

Episode 657: Sonic + Knuckles Pt. 4

Stuart: What else is there to say? Look, we’ve done three of these now, you know what you’re getting into. This is part four, and there’s one more left—that’ll be in the new year. Then it’ll be finished and your life will suddenly feel almost impossibly empty. In the meantime, please do enjoy this continued extensive examination of the Sonic & Knuckles part of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with delightful cover art by Amy Bulmer.

Have you b...

This Week In Retro: The PlayStation

December 3, 1994: We Were NOT (red)e*

by Diamond Feit 

When I repeatedly describe the medium of video games as young, I must confess I do so with an ulterior motive of self-reassurance: Video games can't be that old because I'm not that old. The Atari 2600 launched before my first birthday; the NES arrived in New York City mere weeks before I turned nine. M...

Episode 656: Retronauts Radio - Farewell to Ship to Shore

Jeremy: This episode is a bit different than the usual Retronauts Radio format, since it's not just me soliloquizing at the mic. It would probably come off as self-serving if it weren't all kinda moot! Nadia and I chat with former Ship to Shore Phono Co. boss Aaron Hamel about the now-defunct record label, its releases, and our own contributions to the label's catalog. It's not self-promotion, just a celebration of great music releases and times gone by.

Well, we do talk a...

This Week In Retro: Garou: Mark of the Wolves

November 26, 1999: Certainly, they existed…Those blinded by ambition

by Diamond Feit 

For creative types working on any long-running franchise, continuity can turn into a real bugbear. Calling back to an element from the distant past rewards those fans who have kept coming back year after year, but it'll leave newcomers scratching their heads. In the worst circum...

Episode 655: Dragon Warrior Fact Vs. Fiction / Living History!

Jeremy: The title of this episode is meant to deliberate obscure the fact that this episode is a collection of live panel recordings from this summer. Oh no, you say! I hate those! Oh yes, I say. Because these two are pretty danged good!

The first segment comes to you from Portland Retro Gaming Expo, where I discussed the somewhat tempestuous history of the first Dragon Quest game to reach the U.S. Equally tempestuous was the presentation itself...

Episode 654: Worms

Stuart: Worms has been a part of my life since I was around 1995. Which is why I spend most of my time going to and from the veterinarian. No, no, no, sorry, gross joke. I speak, of course, of Team 17’s venerable artillery series, which has attempted to spin out into various different perspectives and evolutions—not to mention genre shifts—but always seems to come back to Worms Armageddon, also known as “the best one”, as evidenced by its still b...

This Month In Retronauts: November 2024 edition

Hello listeners, Diamond Feit here, and I am Ser-Not-Appearing-In-This-Program. Yes, if you've been paying attention to social media or you noticed that last week's column had no audio portion, you know I caught a cold this month (just in time for my birthday, argh) and it unjustly impacted my ability to speak. Luckily, a joke I made during last month's community podcast gave us an out, so I handed over hosting duties to Stuart ...

Episode 653: The Bronze Age of Arcade Games

Kevin: Today’s episode focuses on a topic that has absolutely fascinated me since I was a small child reading decade-old video game books from the library: the coin-op video games of the 1970s. This was a formative and experimental era of video games that has gone largely overlooked and forgotten due largely to how inaccessible these games are. Only a handful of games from this decade are commercially available today, and even through emulation the vast majority are simply unp...

This Week In Retro: Half-Life 2

November 16, 2004: "Welcome to City 17, it's safer here"

by Diamond Feit 

[Apologies for the lack of audio this week, but my voice is gone. At the very least, here's proof that catching a cold didn't stop me from playing a great video game and sharing my thoughts with you]

I knew it. I knew this day was coming for months, and yet it still caught me o...

Episode 652: Nintendo DS is 20?!

Jeremy: Hey. So. This episode... it's a lot of middle-aged people realizing suddenly that they are pretty old because of a small piece of consumer electronics. We didn't intend for Retronauts to double as a memento mori, but sometimes it happens.

Don't let that deter you from enjoying this podcast, though. Because this podcast is great. How could it not be? It's two hours of discussion centered on the greatest handheld of all time—and, I would say, one of the greatest ga...

Episode 651: Marvel vs. Capcom

Hey there Feit fans, it's me, Diamond Feit. I trust you're also fight fans because we're following up episode #607 with a hearty conversation about Marvel vs Capcom. Last time we covered the multi-year build-up to the inter-corporate crossover and now it's time for the main e...

This Week In Retro: BloodStorm

November 1994: Buy me BloodStorm or go to hell!

by Diamond Feit
We've all heard the expression "life imitates art" but increasingly in the 21st century, this saying gets a lot less traction than a more eye-popping version, "The Simpsons predicted it." Turns ou...

Episode 650: Modern Retro - Antonblast & Grapple Dog

Stuart: I still don’t know what to call throwback games. I don’t like “throwback games” because it kind of seems negative. I used to say “faux-retro” to distinguish from actual retro games until some guy online castigated me for ages because “retro” covers that distinction anyway. I hate him, it’s been years and I’m still waking up furious about it – every single day. Anyway, the reason I bring this stuff up at all is because I don’t want any of you shout...

This Week In Retro: Bayonetta

October 29, 2009: The Witch Hunts are just getting started

by Diamond Feit

I've had The Prophecy on my mind lately, a 1995 motion picture that depicts angels as brutal creatures at war with one another for control of Heaven. After years of American television&nb...

Episode 649: Dead Rising

When the HD era of gaming launched nearly 20 years ago, the gaming public eagerly awaited highly detailed experiences absolutely packed with characters swarming around the screen. Capcom delivered just this with 2006's Dead Rising, though gamers anticipating endless zombie mayhem were greeted by what's essentially Majora's Mask in a mall. This week on Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and The A.V. Club's Will Hughes as the crew chugs gallon after gallon of orange juice (for its heal...

Episode 648: The First Games That Scared Us

Nadia: Happy Halloween! When is a horror game a not-horror game? Pardon the tortured phrasing, but the answer is thankfully elegant: When the game scares you out of your pantaloons. Even the friendliest, most gentle video game can feel like a screaming read of the Necromonicon if you're a kid with an overactive imagination. But as Nadia discovers alongside her special guests Ash Paulsen (of Good Vibes Gaming) and Victor Hunter (of The Axe of the Bloodgod podcast), ...

This Month In Retronauts: October 2024 edition

Hello Retronauts fans, Diamond Feit here. I hope you love baseball and Halloween because both are upon us and come up during the course of this, our latest community podcast! Stuart Gipp and I discuss what we've been playing (that includes horror games), read your feedback, and we've got a brand-new question for you to answer for the next episode! I didn't ...

Episode 647: The Terminator

thick Austrian accent: I'm a listener of Retronauts. I was told that you podcast here. Can I listen please? Where is the download button?

NO! Sorry, everyone, this is Diamond Feit, and you do not want to tell that man anything. He's not a man, a machine. Not a robot, a cyborg. Cybernetic organism!

You must know that I'm talking about The Terminator this week, and I'm talkin...

This Week In Retro: The Evil Within

October 14, 2014: Scream if you love barbed wire!

by Diamond Feit

As much as I hope that the words I write might find an audience, I don't know if I could handle true fame. Sure, I might get lucky one day and strike the perfect balance between financial comfort and creative freedom, but all too often we see authors or filmmakers become celebrities only to find th...

Episode 646: How History Shaped the Games, Pt. 2

Jeremy: Last month (episode 640), we presented an episode recorded on-site at Long Island Retro Expo in which Diamond, Nadia, Jared, and myself dug into the legislative, cultural, and political trends of the 1970s and ’80s that had a huge impact on the evolution of gaming in that era... and, as you might expect from such a massive topic, we only made it halfway through the list of points we wanted to address before running out of time. This week, we reconvene to finish the pro...

Episode 645: The Best and Worst of 16-Bit Horror

Last year, we explored the NES era's few horror games and ranked them on their general spookiness levels—given the standards of the time. And now we're back to do the exact same thing for a whole new generation of consoles! This week on Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Kole Ross (of Duckfeed.tv), Diamond Feit, and Drew Mackie (of Gayest Episode Ever and 2024-10-14 07:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post

This Week In Retro: Ed Wood

October 10, 1924: Ed or Shirley

by Diamond Feit

When you're a kid and you first discover the magic of movies or television or video games, you don't ask questions about where things come from. The giant logo or brand name you see at the beginning declares who made that which follows. Whenever I saw 2024-10-13 12:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Episode 644: Bayonetta

Stuart: I hear you. I hear you all. Stu, you bellow, Bayonetta is not retro, go to jail. First of all, no jail on the planet could hold me. Second, yes it is. It is, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Bayonetta is retro, as proven by this indisputable fact: there is now an episode of Retronauts about it. Checkmate. And in order to git ‘r done as effectively as possible, I got me the biggest Bayonetta fan I know, Seumidh MacDona...

This Week In Retro: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

October 1974: Who will survive and what will be left of them?

by Diamond Feit

As a father and former English teacher, I've had to answer a lot of grammatical questions over the years from children—and a fair number of adults—who expected me to offer definitive answers. I always do my best to placate their many inquiries but the older I get, the more I realiz...

Episode 643: Beetlejuice

These days, Tim Burton might be known best for applying creepy spirals and eerie stripes to existing IP, but in his early years, he was busting into the world of cinema with unique, disturbing, and hilarious films like 1988's Beetlejuice. This bawdy supernatural comedy turned up the Burton factor to 11, and ended up warping millions of adults and children alike. And despite being fairly self-contained, Beetlejuice spawned nearly 100 episodes of an animated series, toys, video games, and, inex...

Episode 642: Terry Pratchett's Discworld

Stuart: I make no secret in this episode of my Discworld ignorance. And you may ask why, you bald, bald man, why would you host an episode focusing on a subject of which you’ve very little knowledge. A good question, but easily answered. You see, I am interested in Discworld. It has always existed somewhat on the fringe of my obsession. I’ve read one or two of the books, yes, but most of my exposure has been to tie-ins. The animation, the graphic novels and–y...

This Month In Retronauts: September 2024 edition

With most of Retronauts in Portland this weekend and myself just getting back from Tokyo, this community podcast is a little later than usual BUT it is no less GOOD than usual! Stuart Gipp and I had the foresight to record this early—before TGS in fact—and now it's here, for you, our dear listeners and supporters.

Make sure you listen carefully to this month's question, I gave it a lot of thought and you should too.

Specific items mentioned in this episode include:

• ...
  2024-09-29 14:45:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Episode 641: Tales of Games Journalism & Games That Hold Up

Nadia: Once upon a time, magazine racks were filled with video game magazines. Most of these publications moved to publish exclusively online by 2010, leaving the magazines that dominated the '80s and ’90s to crumble into ash. But what did video game journalism look like during that awkward growth spurt? How did we collect, write, and deliver game news, reviews, features, and previews with one foot in the digital realm and the other still locked in on the analogue world? Put simply...

This Week In Retro: Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

September 22, 1999: Literal Final Girl Jill Valentine 

by Diamond Feit

Fans underestimate the degree to which hardware demands shape the caliber and direction of the video game industry. Back in 1981 when Nintendo had 2000 unwanted arcade cabinets in a Washington warehouse, the company bet big on an unproven junior employee's ideas to move that surplus inven...

See Us LIVE at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2024!

WHAT: Our "The History of Bowser" panel, live at PRGE 2024

WHERE: Auditorium 1 (E141 - 144) at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo

WHEN: Saturday, September 28th at 5:00pm

WHO: Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Gary Butterfield

Please chec...