Episode 022 – The Oregon Trail I and II (1971-1996)
Episode 022 – The Oregon Trail I + II (1971-1996)
This week in Your Parents Basement, we are doing our best to survive snake bites, drowning, snake bites, cholera, snake bites, dysentery and snake bites! Originally released in 1971, and with many good re-releases culminating in a second installment in 1996, we’re playing The Oregon Trail and The Oregon Trail II!
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TIMESTAMPS
- 0:00 – Intro, which is the main traveling theme from The Oregon Trail II. It varies depending on the condition of your group.
- 49:45 – Brisket has a new game that’s already sweeping the nation, getting fanfare and triumphant applause. It’s !
- 58:30 – Emails. We hear from an old friend, and talk about our favorite Mario accessories.
- 1:13:45 – Snifferoo. (It’s from here, not the actual game, unfortunately.)
SHOW NOTES
– Brisket’s Twitch account is available here, where you can see footage of him playing The Oregon Trail II and past YPB games.
– As mentioned on the show, you can play The Oregon Trail and its various incarnations online for free nowadays. If you’re looking for a specific hard copy, the price tends to range from $3.50 to $10 for the game itself. If you want the box and manuals, it ranges from $4 to $22, according to Price Charting.
– Rare has made a ton of games. Wikipedia has the full list here.
Vidya Game News – September 17, 2015
I am Error. Read these news stories.
– Hey, what are the odds? Shortly after our episode on Tecmo Bowl, it was released for the Wii U shop. Clearly, we’re influencing companies!
– In mixed news, depending on where you stand on Square Enix doing yet another remake… Final Fantasy Adventure, which is actually the first game in the YPB-covered Secret of Mana, is getting a remake for the Vita and smartphones. Siliconera has an article here. It is keeping the same story from the original, but upgrading the graphics and what not.
– Mashable has a sponsored story on some racin’ games from the past. Pre-2000, they focus on F-Zero, Micro Machines, Mario Kart 64, Gran Turismo and Crazy Taxi, and I’ve played four out of five of those splendid games!
– From the AV Club, a piece by John Teti on how Super Mario Bros. is the loneliest Mario game.
– There were a bunch of articles released this week about the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. But as Frank Cifaldi points out in an older piece for Gamasutra, the actual release date of the game in the U.S. is up for debate. Time.com also has a cool slideshow on the evolution of Mario’s look.
– Of all places, USA Today has a good, long oral history on some of the Playstation’s development, on the anniversary of its launch 20 years ago. It’s by Mike Snider, and you can read it here.
– Speaking of the Playstation, Nathan Birch at Uproxx has a good collection of some of the trivia on the device, like that Crash Bandicoot was hated by the Japanese portion of the company and that the system worked better upside down.
– There are now Sega-inspired kicks, although I agree with the comments, that the boxes look cooler than the shoes.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Depending on what source you use, Kingdom Hearts was released today or yesterday in 2002 for the PS2. While it wasn’t my cup of tea because of its reliance on button mashing and a stupid AI, the presentation values (graphics and sound) were top-notch for the collaboration between Disney and Square.
– Some game called Grand Theft Auto V came out for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Although it’s only two years old, it’s kind of a big deal, to the tune of 54 million copies and counting.
Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.
Episode 011 – Secret of Mana (1993)
Secret of Mana (1993)
This week in Your Parents Basement, we are playing one of the highest-rated RPGs of the 16-bit era, Square’s Secret of Mana! Follow along as we lavish praise on the fighting system and music, and do our best to overlook the truncated dialogue in the fight against ebbing mana.
You can manually download this week’s podcast here, or subscribe to the show via the iTunes store. To manually subscribe, use this link in the device / podcast player of choice. You can also follow us on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
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Want to have an email or comment read on the air? We’d love to hear from you! Send us a message on the ole Twitter or Facebook, or, shoot that mail to parentsbasementpodcast@gmail.com. We’re also looking for future show guests, and future show ideas! You can leave those in comments here, or on Facebook or Twitter.
TIMESTAMPS
- 0:00 – The intro, which features music from the flying portions of the game.
- 47:40 – Emails. More dark thoughts from Butterscoot.
- 54:00 – Snifferoo.
SHOW NOTES
– We don’t get into heavy story spoilers for Secret of Mana, since the iOS and Droid versions are still good, and thus, hopefully some of you will be interested enough to give it a try. Basically, any story aspect we talk about comes up within the first five hours (about 10 percent) of the game. However, it should be said that at one point, you do get to save Santa.
– We somewhat on the development history of this game, which is pretty interesting and has been written about several times. In addition to the always-reliable Wikipedia, 1-Up has a column about how the series actually began in 1987.
– As far as the translation specifically, Wikipedia has a transcript of a September 1994 interview with Ted Woolsey, the poor bastard who had to do all of Secret of Mana in 30 days. In the 1990s, he was a controversial figure because his translations really morphed the intent of some text and plot, but opinion has softened on him over the years as people have become aware of the programming and time limitations he faced. He did the translation work on Mana, Final Fantasy 3, Breath of Fire and Chrono Trigger. He has his own page on TV Tropes, Woolseyism, and now works for Microsoft.
– On the show, I (Steve) said that I thought I could probably work my way through this game in 10 hours or so. Well, on YouTube, there is a speed run done in about 3 hours. Ye gads.
– Also on the show, as usual, we talk about how much the game costs now. As mentioned several times, the iOS version is well-reviewed, removes some translation errors and only costs about $10. On eBay, loose carts go for about $30 to $70, and complete packages (game, box, map and manual) go for around $100 to $200, depending on condition. There are also tons of Secret of Mana 2 carts on eBay in the $45 to $60 range. These are not official though; they’re simply the fan translation dumped on to a cart. They’re still playable on your SNES, though.
– We talk briefly about Secret of Evermore, which plays a bit like Mana, but is otherwise completely unrelated. We might cover it more in-depth on another show. Via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, Super-NES.com has a great interview with Brian Fehdrau, the lead programmer for Evermore.
– Hat tip to co-host Todd Brisket, who found this story about the newest boss additions to the Japanese-only Vita game, Rise of Mana.
Your Parents Basement 