Episode 008 – Kid Icarus (1987)
This week in Your Parents Basement, we go soaring through Angel Land as Nintendo’s most-recognized cherub! The gang plays Kid Icarus, and has fun, despite dying way too many times even with the help of save states and strategy guides.
To listen to this week’s show, click here! And as always, you can listen to this week’s show by downloading from the iTunes store – be sure to give us some starrrrssss! (In fact, you don’t even have to listen to give us stars, you know.) 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.
On this week’s show, we were joined by Paul Christian Glenn, who someday hopes that his progeny can fulfill his dream of defeating Kid Icarus. Paul is the co-host of AfterPod, which is a daily podcast show about The Adam Carolla Show, The Mystery Show, and when it comes out, Serial’s second season. If you like the clever shut-ins of Your Parents Basement, you should give AfterPod a listen-and-subscribe as well.
Show notes for Kid Icarus:
– The list of characters and enemies that we mention on the show. The green-haired lass is Palutena (Pail of Tuna). For a helpful chart of the enemies with their appearance, check out the invaluable Kid Icarus page on Strategy Wiki.
– Since we didn’t mention it on the show when we usually do… Because it was a cult classic, an NES copy of the game is somewhat rare now. On eBay, the game alone goes for between $10 and $20, with the manual alone costing around $20. A complete game, manual and box combination goes for $50 to $100, depending on what condition you want it in.
– Want to play Mother 3? You can find details of the fan translation here. It’s a solid, but maudlin, Game Boy Advance RPG. It’s not quite as good as the Super Nintendo Earthbound, but it’s still definitely worth playing if you liked that game.
– Other games briefly discussed on today’s show, in the Video Game News Rewind segment: Diablo 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Jet Set Radio, Ultima VI and Wing Commander.
Vidya Game News – May 28, 2015
It’s the debut of a semi-new feature! We’ve scoured some online sites in an attempt to find some retro gamin’ news you might find interesting, to whet your appetite between shows. Except to see regular news posts on Thursdays for the next couple of weeks as we try this out. So, without further adieu…
– Remember how cool The Wizard was? Well… Not actually. But similar to that movie, there will be a 2015 Nintendo World Championships, as reported by Games Radar and tons of other sites. The entry rounds being held at eight Best Buy locations. For more info, go here.
– Just as a technical project, someone is porting Wolfenstein 3D to the Genesis. Like… they’re doing it now, in 2015. You can see a YouTube video here, and there is a message board posting about it here.
– For the Genesis and the SNES, there is a vibrant homebrew / indie scene. Example: here is a Kickstarter for a new SNES (and possibly NES) platform game.
– A port of Dragon Quest VIII is coming out for the 3DS.
– Sega is pulling a bunch of different games from its iOS offerings, per Pocket Gamer. Games removed include Streets of Rage 2, Gunstar Heroes, Shining Force and Sonic Spinball.
– On Reddit’s GameCollecting subreddit, someone managed to get their hands on TWO copies of DuckTales 2 at the same time! The subreddit itself has some other nice finds.
– A deep dive from Nintendo Life on the cancellation of Star Fox 2, from someone who worked on the game and played a completed Japanese ROM of it. However, a release and translation are probably unlikely, given legal issues with the now-defunct Argonaut Software.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– … Well, kind of. Super Mario Bros. the movie was released in 1993, and it bombed. Per Box Office Mojo, it only made $20.9 million on a $48 million production budget. It only opened fourth on its first weekend, behind “classics” like Cliffhanger, Made in America and Dave. It was out of theaters in about four weeks. The full movie is often posted on YouTube, and really, that’s a better option that expending any cash for that trash.
– Notable game releases: Mass Effect (2008), Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (1999), Crazy Taxi 2 and Dark Cloud (2001).
For the full list of history items, check out Moby Games.
Episode 001 – Super Mario Bros. + The Lost Levels
Your Parents Basement is meant to be a fun podcast project, where some folks talk about their favorite classic games. Click here for our first episode on Super Mario Bros., as well as its way-too-hard counterpart, The Lost Levels.
Want to follow along to future episodes? Add this feed to your podcastin’ device: https://yourparentsbasementpodcast.wordpress.com/category/podcasts/feed/ We are absolutely looking for guests and game ideas for future shows! For both, please email them to us – parentsbasementpodcast@gmail.com – as opposed to leaving them as comments. (Mystery is good for the rest of the listening audience!) You can also follow us on Twitter. Supplemental material for today’s show:
- The opening theme comes from this helpful YouTube video.
- The Super Mario Bros. Super Show with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
- Console Wars by Blake Harris, which was the first book I read that really focused on the rise and fall of Sega during the Genesis era from that company’s perspective.
- “The Secret History of Super Mario Bros. 2” from Wired, which talks about that game’s true origin.
- A deep dive on the failures of the Super Mario Bros. movie on Grantland. The movie rights changed hands in December 2014, suggesting that a second attempt might be coming soon.