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 – 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 21, 2016
– As you can imagine, there is a bunch of Star Fox content this week, because a new game in the series is coming out. (The initial reviews seem to suggest it’s good, but weird control-wise.) Kotaku’s Patrick Klepek has a good piece on why Star Fox 2 never made it out for the SNES, even though it was probably more than 90 percent done. Kat Bailey of US Gamer points out that the series has a long history of innovation – some good, some bad.
– Sega has announced that it’ll allow mods to be released via Steam for some of its old games. Polygon has the press release summary here. Sega hasn’t elaborated on the extent of what it’ll allow and won’t, but it could lead to some interesting creations.
– The latest YouTube Teens React video is on Super Metroid! Check it out here. Only one teen out of six (I believe) can manage to beat the second boss, the Chozo guarding the bombs. Also, if you missed it, we recently covered Super Metroid.
– From Chris Reed at The Cheat Sheet, eight SNES games you have to play!
– Sarah Gish of The Kansas City Star looks at some of the cool bars with video games in the city.
– There is a really cool looking Nintendo 64 anthology book on Kickstarter. Check it out here!
– From Jeff Grubb at Venture Beat, what’s the current status of Atari? Well, seemingly, it’s mostly a patent troll company. They’re claiming that they own the trademark for “haunted house” in video game titling. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2013, and now, it only employs 10 people who mostly work to protect the company’s legacy value.
– Aubrey Sitterson of Geek.com has 11 games that “secretly made the Sega Saturn a great console.” While I wouldn’t agree that the Saturn was great, it was a good system, and it unfairly gets lumped into the Virtual Boy / 3DO / 32X graveyard sometimes.
– Breaking, important news! Video game henchmen plan meetup around explosive barrels! Read more here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– According to Moby Games, Data East was founded on April 20, 1976. The company was one of the early arcade producers, making games like BurgerTime, Cobra Command, Joe & Mac and past YPB show topic Shadowrun. They also did more than a dozen different pinball games, most based on TV shows. However, by the mid-1990s the company’s popularity and series had faded, and their last game came out in 1999. (Revive… Sosei, an adventure game for the Dreamcast, was Japan-only in October 1999. Zombie Revenge, an arcade and Dreamcast release, was the last North American release, seemingly.)
– In 1982, Pitfall! came out for the Atari 2600. It was probably the very best game ever released at the time, and topped the Billboard charts for 64 weeks. The commercial also had Jack Black in his first role.
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 29, 2015
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Chicken! Fight like a robot!” – Berzerk. Don’t be a chicken, read these news links and stories.
– In honor of 30 years of Bomberman, Konami has announced a new game in the series. Pocket Gamer has the story, translated from Japanese news suit Famitsu.
– A new Zelda game means a new addition to the series’ already confusing timeline. IGN has a breakdown here.
– Marketing Week’s Thomas Hobbs interviews Jon Rooke from Sega, who talks about their new strategy when it comes to mobile and traditional games, and confirms that they’re looking into re-releasing Shenmue.
– Also, Sega mistakenly named a character “Boob” instead of “Boo” in one of their mobile games, per Cinema Blend.
– US Gamer has an extensive interview with Masayuki Uemura, one of the creators of the NES. It’s definitely worth checking out.
– From Tech Times and many other sites, the Oliver Twins have discovered and released a long lost Dizzy the Adventurer game, Wonderland Dizzy. You can check out the news article here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 1988, the Sega Genesis came out in Japan. While it strongly challenged the SNES in America, it always trailed in Japan. And as Steve has said repeatedly, check out Console Wars if you’re interested in the history of Sega.
– Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex came out in 2001 for the Playstation 2. It was apparently the fourth game in the series.
– It was only two years ago, but Battlefield 4 and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag both came out today.
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 – 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.
Your Parents Basement 
Episode 109 – The Battle of Olympus (1989)
Episode 109 – The Battle of Olympus (1989)
This week in Your Parents Basement, we are slaying all of the creatures of Ancient Greece in order to save our girlfriend! From 1989, we’re playing The Battle of Olympus by Infinity for the NES. We’re joined by special guest Jovial John!
You can manually download this week’s salamander-skin and olive-filled 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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TIMESTAMPS
SHOW NOTES
– According to Price Charting, The Battle of Olympus is pretty affordable still! The loose cart is only about $11, although you’ll definitely want to spring the $22 for the box and manual for this one, because the manual is incredible.
– Jeremy Parish of US Gamer has a really good interview with Yukio Horimoto, the creator of The Battle of Olympus. Horimoto talks about the influence that Zelda II and that series had on Olympus. (And, for the side-by-side comparison we talked about on the show, go here.)