Vidya Game News – November 10, 2016
– 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 – 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.
Your Parents Basement 