Tag Archives: Kotaku

Vidya Game News – September 13, 2018

Samurai Showdown - 01It is back to school time for the kiddos, but really, it is also a prime opportunity for y’all to read some vidya game news too.

  • Going to be in Toyko anytime soon? From Nintendo Enthusiast’s John Dunphy, a new Kirby-themed cafe will be opening there. Read more here. And, we reviewed his initial Game Boy game for Episode 24. And hey, if you’re in Yakima, Washington, there is a new game-themed bar.
  • From Polygon and other sites, classic fighting game series Samurai Showdown will be revived for the Playstation 4, and likely other systems. Read more here.
  • A re-release of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is coming for the Switch and PS4, per Kotaku and other sites. No word yet on how they will do the gameplay. When it originally came out, it required four GBAs to do multiplayer, which went over about as well as you would think.
  • Also from Kotaku and a bunch of other sites, the Switch port of Gone Home will have classic SNES cartridges in it.
  • Sega Mega Drive shoot-em-up Steel Empire is now available for the PC / Steam, 25 years after its initial release. Read more over at PC Gamer.
  • Mega Man 11 now has a playable demo out, per Polygon. We covered Mega Man 2 for Episode 30, and it was the first guest appearance for Friend of the Show Hawk!
  • Game Informer has a good, long read on the upcoming Fallout 76, a game the SBBs are hyped for.

ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…

  • In 1992, the home console versions of Mortal Kombat came out. We reviewed the show for Episode 118.
  • Rock Band 2 is now 10 years old! You can find plenty of copies of it, and the plastic instruments, for a variety of systems at pretty much any Goodwill or consignment store. Also from 10 years ago is the Dragon Quest / Warrior IV remake for the DS.
  • Sweet Baby Boy favorite FTL: Faster Than Light turns 6 today. It is still a spunky, fun game, and it frequently retails for less than $10 now.
  • Grand Theft Auto V came out 5 years ago, and amazingly, it is still incredibly popular thanks to its initial quality and because of the continued support Rockstar has provided it.

Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. When possible, we attempt to link to original sources for all reporting, and we don’t typically link to stupid multi-page galleries. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.

 

Vidya Game News – September 6, 2018

Playstation 2 Console - 01Another week, another roundup of news links!

  • Attack of the Fan has a neat article on Micro Mages, a new game for the NES. It actually looks kind of neat! You can read more here.
  • Ryan Smith of Chicago Reader has an article on Josh Tsui, one of the developers behind mid-1990s Midway games and Insert Coin, an upcoming documentary about the company.
  • Mashable and The A.V. Club have a good bit of trivia about Bill & Ted – namely, that the first movie had Hitler in the first draft. We covered that bodacious game in, what else, Episode 69.
  • Gizmodo reviews a conversion kit to make your SNES controllers wireless.
  • Sony is finally ending support for the Playstation 2, per Kotaku.

ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…

  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance came out 15 years ago. Some people love it, whereas others recognize it for the bizarre, subpar offshoot of a classic game that it really is. We reviewed the original game on Episode 144. Also, Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge came out the same week for the GBA. Check out our show on the proper game here.
  • Spore came out for the PC 10 years ago. While it was a fun little lark, it wasn’t quite the gaming revolution that game designer Will Wright had billed it up to be. We covered SimCity in Episode 55.

Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. When possible, we attempt to link to original sources for all reporting, and we don’t typically link to stupid multi-page galleries. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.

Vidya Game News – August 23, 2018

APhantasy Star - Box Art - 01nother week, another news roundup! Two in a row is one short of a streak! Huzzah!

  • Thanks to Strictly Limited Games, Project Hardcore will see the light of day. The game was thought to be lost after being delayed for new systems in 1994, but it will now be released on the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.
  • A couple good, claysic RPGs will be released for the Switch in the next few months. According to Siliconera, a remaster for Grandia I and Grandia II will be coming out. Also, from Gematsu, Phantasy Star will come out in September. Kotaku has a longer piece on the upgrade work Sega is doing on this, and other games.
  • Also coming to the Switch will be Vs. Excitebike, per Nintendo Life and Famitsu. Check out our past show on the game here!
  • An old Texaco station in Kentucky has transformed into a classic vidya games bar. Nice! Read more about it here.

ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…

  • In 1993, Nintendo and Silicon Graphics announced a collaboration on 64-bit hardware, Project Reality, that would later become… The Nintendo 64. Read the original press release here.
  • Moonwalker turns 28! Way, way older than the tykes featured in the game. Check out our previous episode, an awesome, loose conversation with Friend of the Show Backsack, here.
  • In 2003, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and SoulCalibur II were released. Both were popular in their respective genres, and holy hell, they’re both 15 years old at this point???

Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. When possible, we attempt to link to original sources for all reporting, and we don’t typically link to stupid multi-page galleries. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.

Episode 143 – Resident Evil 2 (1998)

Episode 143 – Resident Evil 2 (1998)

Episode 143 – Resident Evil 2 (1998)

This week in Your Parents Basement, we are enjoying fine acting and running away from zombies in order to conserve ammo! From 1998, we’re playing Resident Evil 2 by Capcom for the Playstation (and every other system now, too).

You can manually download this week’s totally spooky 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.

And now, there is a Discord channel for all the sweet baby boy and girl fans of YPB! Check it out here, and rub elbows with your favorite co-hosts.

As always, if you like the show, support us by buying from Amazon! You can use this link to go to Amazon, and any purchase you make will kick a couple bucks to the show, with no extra cost to you. It’s a win-win!

Want to have an email or comment read on the air? Want to have your voicemail played? Send all mails and audio files to parentsbasementpodcast@gmail.com.

TIMESTAMPS

  • 0:00 – Intro, which features an incredible commercial for the game. You can check it out on YouTube here!
  • 45:30 – Todd has some good, legitimate reasons why Resident Evil 2 is… The Most Best Game of All-Time.
  • 51:00 – Emails! Followed by New News on Secret of Mana and other games we’ve already played.
  • 1:09:00 – Snifferoo. Next week, our show is going to be the most tactical its ever been!

SHOW NOTES

– According to Price Charting, Resident Evil 2 is pretty affordable. There are more than 10 different versions available at this point, and they’re all between the $5 and $20 range.

Here is the Kotaku article by Stacie Ponder, mentioned by Steve on the show, about the ungodly number of Resident Evil ports out there. Achievement Oriented also did a segment on it, but Steve can’t remember which episode it was on, so just check them out in general.

Vidya Game News – February 9, 2017

castlevania-3-box-art-01– Netflix has confirmed that an animated Castlevania show will be hitting their service in 2017! You can read about it on GameSpot, and a bunch of other sites. Its creator has called it “R-rated as fuck,” and based on Castlevania 3. You can listen to our ‘vania 1 show here.

– Enshrined in Stuff’s Hall of Fame now: The Sega Mega Drive. Read more here!

– From Tristan Jurkovich at GameSpew, a good read on the “bizarre localization” of a fun adventure / platform action game, Power Blade.

– Sweet sassy molassy! Source codes for NBA Jam Extreme and Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter were found on some auctioned computers, according to this Kotaku article, which is based on the fine work of the folks at YouTube channel Silicon Classics.

– On Ars Technica, World of Warcraft gold can now be used on other Blizzard titles like Overwatch and Hearthstone. Also, by the way, we’ve covered a bunch of their games – the original Warcraft series, Starcraft and Diablo.

– A slew of Star Wars games are available in this week’s Humble Bundle, including Knights of the Old Republic and Shadows of the Empire. Check it out here! We haven’t covered those excellent games, but we have played and reviewed Rogue Squadron 3D (included in the bundle!) and Super Star Wars (not including, but you don’t wanna murder jawas anyway).

As always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.

Vidya Game News – January 12, 2017

asherons-call-pc-box-artHey, Steve missed a couple weeks of doing these! Womp, womp, wompppppp. It was mostly because he was looking for new apartments, and also dealing with a time crunch because of the holidays. Going forward, we’re mostly going to focus on the news items. This is because most of the anniversaries, unfortunately, were already starting to repeat themselves. And on that note, herrreeeee is the news!

– Ars Technica publicizes a hack of the NES Classic by Reddit’s NESClassicMods community, which allows you to add games to the system’s library.

– Kotaku, Polygon and other sites have this story about the closing of Asheron’s Call on Jan. 31, and how a 74-year-old dude is still playing the game.

– Also on Polygon, they publicize a trick published by the blog Super Mario Broth, for Super Mario World. Basically, Mario is invulnerable while sliding.

– From Gamasutra, a rowebut is learning how to play Mario Kart 64! You can read the story here, and by the way, our Kart episode is here.

– And hey, more Mario stuff, as Nerdist has stop animation Mare-E-Oh created with Rubik’s cubes. Listen to our Super Mario Bros. episode here!

– If you have Playstation Plus, you’re in luck this month! Day of the Tentacle Remastered, the sequel to Maniac Mansion, is free on the service in January. Check out our review of Maniac Mansion here!

– Shmuplations, of all places, has a cool translation of a Miyamoto interview about the development of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You can read it here!

If you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link!

Vidya Game News – November 10, 2016

skyrim-pc-box-art– Unsurprisingly, Gandhi remains an asshole in Civilization 6, per Kotaku. Check out our show on the original Civilization here!

– On Kill Screen, Emma Kidwell has a nice essay about how video games helped with language when she spent her summers in Japan.

– The NES Classic Edition comes out Friday in the U.S., and some reviews are coming in for it. Kotaku also notes that the old Nintendo call-in lines will be active, too.

– Also, as you may have heard, new Genesis consoles are being made… in Brazil. Polygon’s Charlie Hall notes that the system won’t have HDMI support or ship internationally, but it does come with 20+ games preloaded. Sega in Brazil is like Spinal Tap in Japan, or David Hasselhoff in Germany.

– Kyle Orland of Ars Technica writes about four “found” Kirby games for the SNES, and the difficulty of preserving old digital games, here. You can find our Kirby show here.

– From Matthew Figueira and other sites, Blizzard won’t be doing remakes of Warcraft 1 or Warcraft 2 anytime soon. Also, no news on a potential Warcraft 4 either. But hey, listen to our show on the old series!

Obduction, the new game from Myst creator Rand Miller, will be released for the PS4 and VR in 2017. Read about that and more in Miller’s interview with Dean Takahashi of Venture Beat. And listen to our Myst show here!

– From Kotaku: What should you feed your pregnant characters in The Sims?

ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…

Golden Sun, a popular RPG series by Camelot and Nintendo, first hit U.S. shores on Nov. 11, 2001. It’s 15 now! Almost old enough to drive.

– It was only a year ago, but the sweet baby boys can scarcely remember what our lives were like before the release of Fallout 4 on this day in 2015. We have a lot more time… Stupid, pointless time without Fallout 4. Bethesda’s masterpiece has had several DLC expansions and mod support added, and people are already clamoring for the fifth installment, or a side game, or anything else because Fallout is LIFE.

– Also, Skyrim came out on Nov. 11, 2011. It’s now five years old! A regular sweet kindergarten baby boy. Bethesda sure loves to spoil us in November.

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 – October 28, 2016

The PS2.– Kyle Orland has a good interview with Sid Meier, of Civilization fame, for Ars Technica. You can read it here! And check out our Civilization show here.

– Speaking of Orland, he had a cool link in his weekly newsletter to an older piece about how insider leaks happen. (If you’re not subscribing to Orland’s weekly newsletter yet, you should! That is, if you love vidya games.)

– On Engadget and other sites: A prototype for a SNES version of Rayman has been found.

– In honor of Halloween, Justin Carreiro of The Young Folks has a look at Maniac Mansion. You can listen to our show on it here! Also, Ryan Gibbs of The Young Folks once talked SimCity with us here.

Pokemon Sun and Moon, which release Nov. 18 for the 3DS, are Nintendo’s biggest pre-ordered games of all-time, per a release by the company published on Polygon.

– Nathan Grayson of Kotaku summarizes some of the issues hitting up mod support for Sega games on Steam here.

– The USgamer team ranks all 30 games in the NES Classic here! Games we’ve covered on YPB: Bubble Bobble, Castlevania, Punch-Out, Tecmo Bowl, Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2.

– On Polygon and other sites this week… The official Sega employee song from the 1990s.

ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…

– The PlayStation 2 came out on October 26, 2000. It was pretty popular.

– In 2002, a little game called Grand Theft Auto: Vice City came out. It was pretty, pretty, pretty popular. Almost exactly two years later, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out, and it was also pretty, pretty, pretty popular.

– Another lil game, Fallout 3, came out on October 28, 2008. Again, it was pretty popular.

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 077 – Super Mario RPG (1996)

Episode 077 – Super Mario RPG (1996)

Episode 077 – Super Mario RPG (1996)

This week in Your Parents Basement, we are smashing goombas with hammers and racking up sweet, sweet numbers in the process! From 1996, we’re playing Super Mario RPG by Nintendo and Square for the Super Nintendo. Our special guest is Doctor Tony, friend of Steve’s friend Mary!

You can manually download this week’s jump-tastic 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.

As always, if you like the show, support us by buying from Amazon! You can use this link to go to Amazon, and any purchase you make will kick a couple bucks to the show, with no extra cost to you. It’s a win-win!

Want to have an email or comment read on the air? Send us a message on the ole Twitter or Facebook, or, shoot that mail to parentsbasementpodcast@gmail.com.

TIMESTAMPS

  • 0:00 – Intro, which is the Mario-est music of today’s game.
  • 44:00 – Emails! Helping to keep the lights on at the Kirk Cameron household.
  • 1:05:00 – No Sweet Boy Asks this week, so it’s right to the Snifferoo!

SHOW NOTES

– According to Price Charting, Super Mario RPG is still quite pricy. It’s $46.50 for the loose cart, and $139 for the cart, box and manual. However, it’s available on the Wii virtual stores, which is much more affordable.

– Jason Schreier of Kotaku had a good retrospective on Super Mario RPG this year, in honor of the game’s 20th anniversary. Read it here!

– Likewise, the TV Tropes page for the game is quite robust.

Vidya Game News – October 13, 2016

socks-the-cat-01– Biggest news EVER possibly: The Socks the Cat game for the SNES is probably going to get a release, once it hits its Kickstarter goal! Yay! Read more here. Second Dimension and Tom Curtin, a gaming historian and collector, managed to secure the rights.

– On Kotaku, they have a news item on an NES replica that’s in the shape of a Zelda chest. And, oh, by the way, it has a wireless, floating Tri-force. Read more here!

– Stuff has a cool feature on the history of Nintendo handhelds, including the Game and Watch.

ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…

Mortal Kombat 3 was released for the Genesis and Super Nintendo today in 1995, after its release in arcades on April 15. Its story is completely insane, but hey, it has more buckets of blood, like the previous games in the series.

Pokemon Gold and Silver came out on October 15, 2000. They sold a billion copies.

WWF Raw was released for the PC on October 14, 2002. Because it was the last WWF game on the PC until 2015, it was a popular when it came to mods, even though Anchor’s effort received middling reviews when it came out.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne was released October 12, 2004. It was the first game of that series released in the U.S. by Atlus, and it immediately became a cult classic, bought by about 20 people who all happened to be game critics.

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.