Vidya Game News – September 3, 2015
While Kanye is running for president in 2020, the only one that’ll get our votes is President Ronnie. Are you a bad enough dude to save him? Prepare for the onslaught of political news with this much more appealing vidya game news:
– The aptly named Steven Lebron of Vice Sports has a lengthy interview with Tim Kitzrow, the voice of the NBA Jam series. Among the neat facts in the piece? He only got paid $900 for his initial voice work.
– The final tally for the first sale of Atari 2600 cartridges from a New Mexico landfill? About $107,000, according to Jacqueline Devine of The Alamogordo Daily News. The lot up for sale was 881 games, with the biggest earning being a copy of E.T., which went for $1,535.
– On YouTube, the iBookGuy has a cool series about how graphics and sounds work in older systems. This week’s topic was Apple and Atari, and you can see it here.
– Are you near central New Jersey at all? Cool! Then you can attend A Video Game Con – AVGC – which is being put on by Paul Solomine. The video game-focused event will have more than 60 vendors and 100 merchandise tables, as well as pretty much every old school console. Chuck O’Donnell of MyCentralJersey.com has a full article here.
– Jaz Rignall at US Gamer has an article on one of those obscure consoles you probably haven’t heard of, the Amstrad GX4000. It also gets into the odd European market, which was not dominated by the NES.
– In celebration of its birthday, Uproxx’s Nathan Birch has a long piece on some of the trivia aspects of the Super Nintendo. Amongst the tidbits: Nintendo never wanted to make a follow-up to the NES, most N64 games started as SNES projects, and yes, the system turns yellow over time.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Pretty much zero games of note came out in America, unless you’re really into NFL Head Coach 09 or Blade II (2002). And if you are, well, it might be time to reevaluate your life and your priorities.
– In Japan, the awesome cult game The Magic of Scheherazade came out in 1987. It didn’t hit American shores until December 1989, but it was a cool game that mixed adventure and RPG elements. And oh yeah – some game called Metal Gear Solid came out in Japan. It became kind of a big deal…
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.
Vidya Game News – August 13, 2015
Ah, August 13. At least it’s not a Friday the 13th, the day of OK movies and horrible games, historically. Looking at this week’s neat vidya game stories from around the web:
– Polygon is doing the lord’s work by ranking all 30 games in the Rare Replay classic remake for the Xbox One. You can read it here, but as a warning, it’s an intense load in terms of video and flash for some older machines. The piece is by Philip Kollar.
– In Vancouver, a dude has souped up his Hyundai with a Sega Genesis theme, according to an article in the Parksville Qualicum Beach News.
– From Cinema Blend, an article by William Usher on the weird and terrifying Sonic games.
– The latest Kids React video is on the Nintendo 64’s Pokemon Snap. It’s like Kids Say The Darnedest Things, without roofie pudding pops!
– Cameron Faulkner of Tech Radar points out that a line can be drawn from the development of the Dreamcast to the eventual integration of Windows 10 into the Xbox.
– Ever wondered about the video game industry in Ireland? News Talk has you covered.
– The movie version of DuckTales, The Treasure of the Lost Lamp, turned 25 in August.
– From Kotaku, the secret NES and SNES games on Seinfeld’s bookshelf.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Xena: Warrior Princess came out for the Game Boy Color in 2001, as did World Series Baseball 2K2 for the Dreamcast. As you can imagine, August is still slim pickings for decent video game releases. The next year, NCAA College Football 2K3 came out.
– In 2003, EA Montreal was announced. It formally opened in March 2004. They’ve mostly produced accessory and spin-off games for EA, excluding NHL 07 and Army of Two.
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.
Vidya Game News – June 18, 2015
Box art, from FF6 (top) and FF3 (bottom).
Tons of new news, with the yearly E3 conference happening in Los Angeles this week! Scouring the web and Google Alert for some of the noticeable reboots, retreads and re-releases, along with the usual odds and ends…
– Square might not be done with just the announced Final Fantasy VII remake. According to the director of that PS4 remake, he’s also interested in redoing the fifth and sixth installments. (The box art in this post comes from a review of the games here.)
– Piggybacking on the interest from our last show, clearly, Nintendo has announced that Star Fox Zero will be out this holiday season for the Wii U. Game Informer has an interview with Miyamoto, and like some other interviews from the past month, he says it’s unlikely Star Fox 2 ever gets a proper release. Per most reviews of Nintendo’s E3 performance, they’re paring back on their Wii U offerings, expanding their 3DS array, and not talking about their console-after-Wii.
– From CNET, a gamer proposes to his girlfriend by hacking The Legend of Zelda.
– Also from CNET and their E3 coverage, Shenmue 3 looks to be a reality after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The series debuted in 1999, and the sequel came out in 2001.
– And yet another interesting CNET article, this one from Danny Gallagher on AI programs playing Super Mario World.
– Atlus says Persona 5 is still scheduled for a 2015 North American release, despite widespread layoffs at parent company Sega.
– From Super Compressor, 14 things in your parents’ basement worth serious money.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
… Actually, not much happened, unless you have deep, resounding love for games like Cruise Ship Tycoon and Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection, which came out in 2003. The most “significant” game release is probably Neverwinter Nights in 2002.
Game history info from Moby Games.
Episode 007 – Star Fox (1993) and Star Fox 64 (1997)
Episode 007 – Star Fox (1993) and Star Fox 64 (1997)
This week in Your Parents Basement, it’s quiet… Too quiet… Be careful, it’s a trap! Do a barrel roll!
The gang covers Star Fox this week, both the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 installments, since they’re somewhat similar. We fight through the overly shiny polygons of the first game to find the splendid gameplay underneath, and just generally heap praise on the second installment. (We also express wonder at the seemingly weird direction the series has taken, and the murkiness of animal species in this universe.)
As always, you can listen to this week’s show by downloading from the iTunes store – be sure to give us some starrrrssss! To manually download, click here. To manually subscribe to the pod, input this link to your device of choice. You can also follow us on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
The show notes for this week:
– Thanks to twitter user Tecmo Bowl vs. RBI (Baseball) for writing in! If his user name excites you, check out his website.
– At several points, Steve mentions an interview with one of the programmers from the never-released Star Fox 2. It was for Nintendo Life, and you can read it here. A mastered ROM exists, but hasn’t been released, in contrast to the weird, alpha versions floating around the Internet. Surprisingly, the subject of the article, Dylan Cuthbert, also gets involved in the comments.
– Although it was widely rumored that there would be some sort of Star Fox presentation at E3, as of 7:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, there was nothing on the web. Nintendo’s main event is scheduled for Tuesday, June 16, so if there is something new, it’ll probably be covered in the Thursday news post. As of now, the next Star Fox installment is scheduled for release on the Wii U sometime in 2015, probably Christmas.
Episode 005 – NBA Jam (1993)
In this week’s Your Parents Basement podcast, the gang tackles NBA Jam on the eve of the NBA finals! Like all good sports programmes, they use the game to predict the final of the series, and they also talk about their other favorite basketball-based video games, like Scottie Pippen’s Puzzle Challenge.
To download this week’s show, click here! You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes, or manually use this link. If you like the show, be sure to give us some starrrrssss. You can also follow us on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
The show notes for this week:
- A download of NBA Jam for iOS devices is free this week. This is the On Fire edition we mention at the end of the game discussion. It’s quite splendid on my PS3, although I’m not sure how well it translates to iOS.
- At one point, Huell mentions a ranking of the “best” NBA Jam teams by Deadspin. You can find that here. It is humorously presented with absolutely no summary information for the decisions.
- Mike Iuzzolino’s NBA career was so short that his Wikipedia entry has a mention to his appearance in NBA Jam. It’s an unplanned career highlight!
- When NBA Jam was being remade for the Wii, ESPN.com ran a good interview with a producer from the game. He gets into how EA Sports procured the rights for making a new version of the game, which evolved from a prototype clone called Bounce. The Wikipedia entry on the series also has some information on the Midway and Acclaim split.
- Unfortunately, Scottie Pippen’s Puzzle Challenge and Space Jam Basketball do not exist (yet). However, Shaq Fu, Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City, and Barkley Shut Up and Jam! do absolutely exist. They are varying degrees of “meh,” although Sir Charles’ game is actually kind of OK… it just features no other NBA players, so why would you ever want to play it instead of NBA Jam? And shockingly, Pippen DOES have his own video game: Slam City With Scottie Pippen on the Sega CD. It is not well-reviewed.
- Finally, a fun list from a blog: The 11 Current NBA Players Who Have Never Dunked.
Your Parents Basement 