Indie and Retro

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

Mario had TWO big events in the same week for us, specifically: Super Mario Wonder came out on the Switch, and we got to go to Super Nintendo World in Hollywood for the first time ever. Hear us talk about both of these things, including development history of both and what we think! We rode the rides! Well, the ride. And we played the games! Both in real life and on the TV. What is real anymore, truly?

The Game Awards - the annual Oscars show but for video games - are almost ten years old. But where did they come from? Was it all just some strange concoction cooked up in Geoff Keighley’s little gamer brain? Turns out the answer is: mostly, yeah! Join us as we delve into the history of The Game Awards: where they came from and where they’re going. You might think they’re bad! But just wait until you see how things used to be before Geoff made them what they are today… Special part of this episode: Mumbles did all the research this time! So she leads the whole show! She was very nervous but her husband thinks she did a really great job.

Super Mario Bros. (1993) is NOT The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). It’s something much weirder, for many reasons. Money. Inexperience. Nine different writers and daily script changes. It’s not a good movie, but it is a very interesting one. No one can say that it didn’t have ideas, but maybe it could’ve had some different ones? Because a Patreon suggested it, join us as we recap the film and our reactions to it, before delving in to why and how it ended up the way it did. Then you can watch the new movie instead, which actually feels like a Mario film and not a hijinks-filled cyberpunk dystopia full of too-good-for-this stage actors and the people behind Max Headroom. (Also: thank you to kodyack for some of the reference links, and to Bryce for suggesting it!)

Daisy is NOT Princess Peach - she is her own character! And she’s been around maybe longer than you thought, although it wasn’t until the last 20 years or so that she’s firmly established herself in Mario canon as the sassy, sporty, “will Luigi make a move or what” wild princess of Sarasaland. Learn where she came from and hopefully where she’s going as we take you on a journey allllll the way back to the launch of the original Game Boy. And as she says whenever it’s her turn in Mario Party, “DAISY!” We are absolutely working on improving the audio quality of the I&R podcast, but we figured this cute little episode is worth sharing. We hope you love it and learn a lot about our girl Daisy! Games I mention: Potionomics An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs Wide Ocean Big Jacket

Part 2 of the Tomb Raider podcast shows what happens when you force a team to make a slightly improved version of the same game every year for five years in a row, and then you try to scale that game from PS1 to PS2 size without any real direction or leadership.

Lara Croft was an icon that made video games mainstream in a way that Mario never managed.

Warning: spooky stuff! This is a podcast about the creepypastas, and the scary stuff your friend said his cousin saw in a game once, and secret codes in games that may not actually exist (unless they do…?). How much is real? How much is completely made up by someone being impish? And how much is a perversion of something that did really happen once, but has morphed beyond all recognition into something new? Maybe don’t listen to this one right before bed… Additional stuff: The Polybius Conspiracy documentary podcast Cat DeSpira’s Polybius deep-dive

We're back! Get ready for a summer edition of the Indie & Retro Podcast. Kicking things off: Team Fortress 2. This episode we talk about my formative years playing the game, get into the dev stuff, and ramble about hats. Yes, I said hats!

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

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

Dragon Age games take way too long to make, or aren’t given enough time at all. They weren’t supposed to have dragons, or fireballs, or guys with horns. But guess what! It has all of those things, and even the “bad” games in the series have so much to offer. Join your lovely hosts as we talk about the series that proved hardcore Western RPG’s (with romance, even!) still had an audience, an audience ever eager for more. How retro will Origins be when Dragon Age 4 releases? At least a little more retro than now. These games were never easy to make, but those are the games with the best stories, yeah?

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

Indie games I mention: Tukoni Amazing Cultivation Simulator I am Dead And, yes I did research to see that the Cowboy Bebop fight scene was animated by the same dude. Now a word from Nick: Prince of Persia was made pretty much by one man: movie loving Yale graduate Jordan Mechner. He wasn’t great at animation, so he used rotoscoping. He wasn’t developing for a console with a lot of memory, so his enemies had to be very efficiently programmed. There were a lot of constraints, and he worked around them to make a franchise that - at first - wasn’t that successful. The thing is, it looked so advanced compared to everything else on the market, and it’s now considered a classic. Join us, and also learn about some indie games that you might like even if you don’t care about Prince of Persia even a little bit!

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

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

SimCity is not a game I've played, but it is a game that helped inspire the stuff I love now! Here's links to all the indie games I mention: Parkasaurus Simmiland Game Dev Tycoon And a word from Nick:

We delve into the mystery of monkey island! Well, actually, that's Ron Gilbert's secret to keep.

Links to the indie games I talk about: Alone With You Still There Journey to the Savage Planet And a word from Nick:

These may not be the BEST, but they are our favorite :)