Vidya Game News – February 17, 2017
– Those wonderful people on Reddit have managed to get Primal Rage 2 working on MAME. Read more here!
– Polygon and other sites are reporting that the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane trilogy will hit stores on June 30. You can listen to our Crash Bandicoot show here!
– On Twitter, via US Gamer, some lucky journalists back in the day got promotional t-shirts for Project Reality, the early name for the N64. And, they’re gloooorrrrrious.
– Unholy Night, a new SNES fighting game by the makers of Samurai Showdown and King of Fighters, is looking for Kickstarter backers for a physical release. You can find more info here.
– Achievement Oriented, the video game podcast on Bill Simmons’ Ringer network, had an interesting episode on the future of sports video games – and how bad NBA Live has been lately – and how damn successful Grand Theft Auto 5 has been. You can listen to it here!
– Den of Geek has a good story on the weird approval process for the bad… well, worse versions of Moonwalker. You can listen to our show on the “good” Genesis one here!
– EXCELLENT! Keanu Reeves confirmed that work is continuing on Bill and Ted 3. Hopefully it doesn’t spawn another horrible vidya game though, as we discussed on a previous show.
As always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.
Vidya Game News – January 12, 2017
Hey, 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 – July 21, 2016
– Gizmodo has an awesome write-up of the find of a Seattle man: The incredibly rare Nintendo 64 disk drive.
– Of all places, Playboy has a long read on how the really good 2009 Ghostbusters game came together. You can read it here, although your work’s spam filter might block. And hey, listen to our show on the NES Ghostbusters here!
– Engadget has a good summary article of Ben Heck ripping into the “newly” discovered Nintendo-Sony CD unit.
– There is now a Kickstarter for the old NES Wisdom Tree games, which were pretty horrible games based on Bible stories. But still, if you want to support it, go here.
– Now in Japan! Kirby restaurants. (And check out our Kirby show.)
– From The Daily Mail, games like Mario Kart might make you a better driver, according to a study. (Check out our episode here!)
– Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes has a review of the Analogue NT, a souped-up clone of the NES. It’s basically like a great version of the NES Classic going on sale this November. And, oh, it costs $500.
– From Mashable and Reddit, Matt Damon might be interested in doing some video game stuff.
– Posted on a bunch of sites, including the developer site: Obduction, a spiritual successor to Myst, has been delayed from July 26 to the week of Aug. 22.
– Looking to move out of your parents basement? Booooo! But if you are, then don’t go to Worcester. Your parents’ basement is good enough for Jeff Teague, so it should be good enough for you.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– A pair of classic Genesis games, Shinobi III and Road Rash 2, came out in 1993.
– On July 22, 2008, a remake of Final Fantasy IV came out for the DS. It was… really bizarre. Developed by Matrix Software, it was in 3D and had an augment system that allowed you to power up characters after they left your party. The difficulty was also ramped up, and some story segments were added back in.
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 – May 12, 2016
– A copy of Stadium Events that a guy got at a yard sale for $2 just turned into a $7,500 sale for him. This site has the story. (Warning! Autoplaying video.)
– Someone has hacked an NES with a custom modem to read Twitter. Read about it on Motherboard!
– From Reddit, and copied to a bunch of other sites, a user has developed a Virtual Boy emulator for Google Cardboard.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Super Mario RPG, a collaboration between Square and Nintendo, came out May 13, 1996. It turns 20 on Friday! Holy hell!
– The Saturn was released on May 11, 1995. With its release came console versions of Clockwork Knight, Daytona USA, Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter. For a good, long retrospective, check out this piece by Jeremy Parish on US Gamer.
– Six years ago on May 11, 3D Dot Game Heroes by Silicon Studio came out for the PS3. If you’re a fan of Zelda-like games, it’s pretty good, and available in plenty of bargain bins!
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 – April 14, 2016
– The Tumblr account Super Mario Broth highlighted a rare Super Mario Bros. 3 animation this week – The Hammer Bros. suit sliding. You normally can’t slide in the suit in the game, so you have to do it in this one stage.
– Also in the category of Super Late Easter Eggs, a bald guy in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! reveals when to throw punches to knock out Piston Honda and Bald Bull. Read about it on Reddit here.
– In advance of the release of Star Fox Zero on April 22, there is a comparison of Corneria across the different versions. And hey, check out YPB’s Star Fox episode here!
– Nerdist and a bunch of other sites had the Player Piano cover of the moon theme from DuckTales. It’s the hot game that got one out of one DuckTale from Todd on one of our first shows!
– From TechTimes, Mark Lelinwalla looks at the five console generations Kobe Bryant has spanned. Also from TechTimes, Dianne Depra has a cool preview piece on a neat new book, The Art of Atari. Some really good images here!
– And again on TechTimes… Quinten Plummer has a cool article on how the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois managed to revive a prototype Beavis and Butt-Head game that only had 12 copies made. The secret? Cannibalizing a 3DO.
– OC Weekly has a story on Sega Genecide, a cover band. Headline: “Sega Genecide eat, breathe and shit 90’s cover songs.”
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Not quite today, but on April 13, 1992, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past came out in North America. It continued the wildly popular series, and it was a bright, vibrant 16-bit game. Per Wikipedia, it sold 4.61 million copies, good enough for fifth on the platform.
– On April 12, 2001, Big Ape Productions released The Simpsons Wrestling for the PSX to pretty miserable reviews. Of course, if you’re looking for a good Simpsons game, or want to hear about some of the horrible ones, check out our previous show!
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 – February 25, 2016
– The BBC has an awesome story and interview with Howard Scott Warshaw, and the headline says it all: “The man who made ‘the worst video game in history.’” And by that, of course they mean E.T. for the Atari 2600. You can read the story here. It gets into some of the troubled development, and also that Atari paid $21 million (!!!) for the rights to the game. (And the awesome image on today’s post comes from that story. They definitely don’t make game ads like they used to.)
– Reddit user dolopodog has posted a list of the banned words for the 3DS.
– This week, the IGN show Nintendo Voice Chat covers the 10 awesome games that never left Japan.
– The co-creator of the Atari Lynx and a programmer for the Amiga, Dave Needle, has passed away, according to a Facebook post.
– From a translation of a YouTube video, Geno of Super Mario RPG was considered as a DLC for Smash Brothers.
– Nathan Birch of Uproxx has a good beginner’s guide on retro gaming and collecting. Of note is that it’s focused on the systems that are the best to collect and play, not necessarily the ones that hold their value the best.
– TechTimes has a link and write-up to one of the old commercials for The Legend of Zelda. It features rapping. It’s ridiculous…ly awesome.
– From JackTech on YouTube, it’s an autopsy of a Game Boy! Also on YouTube, a SNES Counter Console, via Nintendo Enthusiast and Rerez. It was used to test broken systems.
– The Mega Man Legacy Collection came out this week for the 3DS, so there are some reviews of it floating around the Internet, like on Kotaku. There are frame rate issues, just like the original games! Huzzah!
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Pretty much nothing of significance came out today. Sorry! Tekken 5 came out on Feb. 24, 2005 for the Playstation 2, so that’s about the best I can do.
SHAMELESS PLUGGING
Steve is selling a bunch of video game stuff on eBay; mostly older, cheaper stuff for PS2, XBox, and the 360. Check it out here!
Vidya Game News – February 11, 2016
– Legitimately cool, but some NSFW text and language: Canadian punk band PUP has a ton of re-purposed vintage video game stuff for its music video of “DVP.” Check it out on YouTube! It’s definitely a must-watch for any old games fan.
– James Trew of Engadget has a cool retrospective on the Atari Lynx, which is one of those obscure systems from the early to mid-1990s.
– Are you in the Austin, Texas area on Feb. 21? You’re in luck! You can attend the NBA Jam Invitational Tournament at Empire Control Room & Garage. Find more details here. Also, from FOX Sports and several other sources, the University of Florida used NBA Jam graphics for a promotion.
– In “WTF Sega???” news, The Worldfolio has an interview with the president and CEO of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc., and he said development continues on a live action-animation hybrid Sonic The Hedgehog movie. It’s tentatively scheduled for a 2018 release.
– A hat tip to Friend of the Show Hypermotard, as he passed along this Reddit AMA with Don Rawitsch, one of the co-inventors of The Oregon Trail.
– From the appropriately named This Is Why I’m Broke, it’s a Nintendo console lamp. The price of $95 seems a bit steep to me, but still, it looks pretty cool.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 2014, Square somewhat buried the third installment of Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning Returns, by releasing it in this traditional “dead” period. The game itself is a bit of a mess, but it has some cool concepts, like the ability to hunt enemies to extinction and the setting of the end of the world. Like a lot of recent Square efforts, it’s undone by some meh storytelling in the third act.
– We typically don’t use Japanese dates for “anniversaries” on the old YPB blog, but for whatever reason, Feb. 11 is a banner day for the genre in Japan. In 1990, Dragon Quest IV came out, and as usual it did major business in Japan. It didn’t hit American shores until October 1992, and it was very much a “niche” title with seemingly only 15 copies released. A Nintendo DS remake came out in 2007 and 2008; it tends to be controversial, because while it cleans up some gameplay and “where do I go next?” aspects, it gives all of the characters ridiculous accents.
– In 1998, Xenogears was released by Square in Japan. It has a strong cult following to this day because of its unique RPG system with martial arts and robots fighting, along with a plot that focuses on religion, psychology and identity crisis. The reaction is still mostly positive, even though the second half of the game falls apart a bit for behind-the-scenes budget reasons.
– Square released Final Fantasy VIII in Japan in 1999. It was the second Final Fantasy game for the Playstation, and drastically different from the preceding game, and as a result it’s somewhat a black sheep in the series. Although it has sold more than 8.5 million copies, it’s been passed over for remakes in favor of VII and X, even though its story and “look” hold up somewhat better. It’s not really a game for Final Fantasy newcomers though, as the battle system takes some getting used to, and exploit knowledge on a second playthrough can let you become an all-powerful character within the game’s first few hours.
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 032 – Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Episode 032 – Metal Gear Solid (1998)
This week in Your Parents Basement, we are using cardboard boxes to sneak and strangle our way past terrorists! From 1998, we’re playing a masterpiece from Hideo Kojima and Konami, Metal Gear Solid! Our special guest this week is Dale, who recently played the game for a charity drive.
You can manually download this week’s stealthy 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 about a minute of the main theme from Metal Gear Solid.
- 1:01:45 – Emails. None of them are fake, so the guys talk about their favorite Mario Kart series racers.
- 1:25:00 – Snifferoo. Next week, we’re playing a game from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
SHOW NOTES
– According to Price Charting, Metal Gear Solid is still priced reasonably, at $10 for just the game CDs and the case. New copies are costlier, at an average sale price of $113. The Gamecube version costs more, ranging from $33 to $80, but it’s available on the last two generations of systems in various collections for around $10 to $20.
– Dale was on a previous episode of the pod, a wonderful show on Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City. You can read more here, which includes a link to the episode to listen.
– On Reddit, AudioRejectz attempts to summarize the Metal Gear timeline through 2014. This would be before the 2015 game, Metal Gear Solid 5, came out. The Metal Gear series article on Wikipedia is a bit more brief, but the entries for the individual games are as insanely detailed as you would think.
– The best Metal Gear spoof belongs to Mega64. View the video here. Also, as you’d expect, the Metal Gear Solid page on TV Tropes is friggin’ huge.
Vidya Game News – November 25, 2015
This week’s news post is a day early, because of Thanksgiving on Thursday. If you’re feeling grateful for YPB this year, give back via our Amazon link. ❤ It won’t add anything to your Black Friday purchase! Shop by using it here.
– The AV Club’s Annie Zaleski has an incredible roundtable interview with three Nintendo game counselors. It’s really long, but totally worth reading. Highlights: Nintendo would pay for limos and tons of booze at the annual Christmas party, counselors got free systems and discounts on games, and it was hell to answer the phones the entire day.
– One of the newest Rifftrax movies is vidya game “classic” The Wizard! You can purchase it here. It has Fred Savage, Rilo Kiley and others in full glory.
– From a Reddit user, it’s an old school ad from Electronics Boutique! At one point, Donkey Kong Country 3 was $69.99. A new SNES with Killer Instinct? $79.99.
– John Markley of The Escapist has a feature on the history of Nintendo’s religious censorship in games.
– Rollin Bishop of Tech Times has an oddly named feature, Licensed to Kill, although he has a nifty review of Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Depending on what country you’re in, Donkey Kong Country came out for the SNES either on Nov. 21, Nov. 24 or Nov. 26 of 1994. It’s renowned as one of the best vidya games of all-time, and re-established the vibrancy of the series. It is yet another strong game released by Rare. (Past YPB episodes on their games include Goldeneye and R.C. Pro Am.)
– Speaking of Rare… Killer Instinct Gold, the Nintendo 64 version of the arcade game Killer Instinct 2, came out this day in 1996. While the first game was seen as revolutionary because of automated combos, the sequels had diminishing returns.
– Chrono Trigger came out in 2008 for the Nintendo DS. The re-release added a bonus dungeon, and made the game much easier to play and purchase than past versions for the SNES and PSX.
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 8, 2015
“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade! Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man whose gonna burn your house down – with the lemons!”
Here’s some news to go with them lemons:
– The lead designer from Earthworm Jim says he would be open to doing a sequel. That, and more, are in the linked Reddit AMA.
– Also on Reddit: Is it possible for Scrooge McDuck to swim through the gold coins in his money vault? Probably not.
– Via Twitter, Sega has announced there will be a Game Gear theme available the 3DS, which would have seemed impossible in the early 1990s. (Then again, so would the 3DS, and smartphones, and the Internet…)
– Cassidee Moser of IGN.com has a heads-up about this Reddit user, who’s turned an old NES cart into a working NES.
– From Kotaku and several other sites, there is a really cool box art book coming out for the Super Nintendo. It’s from this guy.
– The 8-Bit Guy has a YouTube video about how the music was made on the NES and Commodore.
– Good times, good times! From Destructoid, a guy pawned a Genesis, not knowing there was meth inside.
– WDRB has a story on getting out of Your Parents Basement. Ugh, why would you ever want to do that?
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– NBA Live 2003 and NBA 2K3 game out for the Playstation 2, Xbox and Gamecube in 2002, oddly enough. Of course, NBA 2K3 was better.
– Although they’re not classics, Beyond: Two Souls and Disgaea D2 came out in 2013.
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.
Your Parents Basement 