Jeremy Parish summons the eldritch forms of Castlevania experts Kurt Kalata, Rob Russo, and Kevin Bunch to discuss the enigma that is... Castlevania games that don't fit into any other specific grouping, like Haunted Castle and Bloodlines. Spooky!
Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, and Nadia Oxford get equipped with opinions about the latest entry in the Mega Man series and how it upholds the franchise's lengthy legacy. This one's been in the vaults so long that Mega Man 11 is almost retro now!
Live from Long Island Retro Expo! Jeremy chats with Rob Russo and Kurt Kalata from HG101 about loving unpopular game systems, then muses on the means and philosophy behind playing old games with VGHF's Frank Cifaldi and MLIG's Coury Carlson.
For a little over a decade, Castlevania keeper Koji Igarashi cut his own path with the famous side-scrolling series by backing away from its traditional hardcore action and platforming, and leaning more towards RPG elements and exploration. The result was what we now know as the "Metroidvania," a genre that thrived for the ten years Igarashi found himself away from the style of game he and his team popularized. But does our current glut of Metroidvanias make his newest creation, Bloodstained: Ri...
We're coming back to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year for another live appearance! When: Saturday, October 19 at 9:00pm Where: Auditorium A at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo What: Our latest live panel, "When Celebrities and Video Games Collide!" For more info, check out the official PRGE schedule , or the official website . We hope to see you there!...
Retronauts East (Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Chris Sims, and Ben Elgin) returns to the ’30s to evaluate the failings and successes (mostly failings) of Indiana Jones's most Problematic-with-a-capital-P adventure—and its impact on games, of course. Frickin' mine carts....
As Lucasfilm Games began to refine their philosophy of fairness, designer Brian Moriarty doubled down on this concept with his idea of a video game expressly designed to be completed. This would eventually take the form of Loom, an adventure game far different than anything that would come before or after it. With no inventory, no verbs, and music as your only means of interacting with the world, Loom stands some 30 years later as an interesting evolutionary dead end for the genre. On this episo...
Finishing out our patron request series on roguelike role-playing games, Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Jason Wilson, and John Harris explore latter-day roguelikes and how we got to the weird, wonderful world of Spelunky.
Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt, and Shane Bettenhausen use the Konami Code to tackle the challenge of recapping the Contra series, just in time for the latest entry in the franchise.
We often talk about the U.S., Japan, and the U.K., but what about the rest of the world? Games journalist and historian Thomas Nickel takes time out of his Tokyo Game Show work to share some insights into the classic gaming experience in Germany.
In the past decade, developer From Software went from making poorly reviewed oddities to being one of the most important developers in our modern era. And it all started with Demon's Souls, a humble, slightly janky game that challenged the new standard of frictionless gameplay in the HD era, and delivered an experience we didn't know we were so hungry for. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy's Parish, USgamer's Kat Bailey , and Duckfeed.tv's Gary Butterfield as the crew explor...
Jeremy Parish teams up with the Retronauts East crew to discuss PC classic puzzle-action game Lemmings before jumping into a one-on-one interview with one of the game's designers, Mike Dailly of DMA Designs.
Now that Retronauts has transitioned to deep dives of single titles over the past few years, it's about time to focus on a genre we rarely touch: adventure games. That said, this marks the beginning of a limited series where I (Bob) will be covering the entire LucasArts adventure library—one game per episode—hopefully with new and/or rare guests. Since I'm not covering these games in any particular order, there's no better place to start than The Secret of Monkey Island, the release that would d...
Continuing our journey through the Final Fantasy series, Kat Bailey joins Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey to talk about what makes Final Fantasy VIII such a weird and wonderful chapter in the series—just in time for the remaster! Just mind the spoilers...
Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, and Shane Bettenhausen paraglide into Kazakh S.S.R. to profess the glory of a game that remains indelibly cool even 30 years later: Capcom's Strider.
The curse of the podcaster means we usually have so much to say in our limited time that we often don't have space to let you get a word in edgewise. So, every six months, I (Bob) like to collect comments and questions from the last six months' worth of my episodes—from both the main site and Patreon—and respond to them with a guest. So this week, join me and Jeremy as we respond to your thoughts on Spider-Man games, Reggie Fils-Aime, Kingdom Hearts 3, Sonic the Hedgehog's many voice actors, Sta...
Just as video game boss fights were becoming more sophisticated, Hollywood gave us 1987's The Running Man, a movie that—whether its writer knew it or not—exists as a 100-minute-long boss rush. Though other big, beefy action movies of the '80s inspired video games more directly, this lower-profile entry in the Schwarzenegger canon might have had an even bigger effect on the way we look at boss fights in general. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and Henry Gilbert as t...
If you like Smash Bros., you'll be angry about this episode! Jeremy, Chris, Ben, and Benj gather to discuss the classic influences that define Smash Bros. Ultimate, but they get sidetracked and turn what was supposed to be a quick series overview into a full, rambling, off-the-cuff episode that veers wildly beyond what they had prepped and researched for. Whoops!
Composer Nathan McCree reminisces about his groundbreaking work creating the soundtrack for Lara Croft's earliest adventures, the challenges in revisiting that material decades later, and... The Spice Girls?!
By patron request, Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey recruit Kat Bailey and Jason Wilson to scramble all fighters and mount an unrelenting assault of knowledge against the topic of LucasArts' classic Star Wars sandbox shooter series X-Wing (and TIE Fighter).
The Retronauts East crew (Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Ben Elgin, and Chris Sims) responds to YOUR letters about episode topics that may or may not have already been published, including New Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy Tactics.
We're living in the era of the gig economy, and now our apartments are hotels, our cars are taxis, and we even have to make Marios ourselves. But that's okay, because Nintendo's Super Mario Maker series has thrived over the past half-decade as not only a celebration of Mario's 2D legacy, but an amazing toolset that lets budding creators put together levels that aren't even in the wildest dreams of Nintendo's top craftsmen. On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Chris Kohler, and Ray Ba...
The Retronauts East crew looks back at the legacy of beloved superhero classic Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation 2. Then, Jeremy Parish talks to designer/tech lead Jamie Fristrom about the game's creation.
Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Kat Bailey, and Shivam Bhatt equip their Dictionaries and set their Reaction Skills to "Podcast Debate" as they form up into a squad and take on Final Fantasy's all-time greatest spin-off: 1998's Final Fantasy Tactics for PS1.
Mario might be Nintendo's big-time mascot, but for six years of Nintendo Power, one banana-haired brat served a similar role. In what amounted to one of the first manga series snuck into the hands of American children, Nester existed as the foil to the real-life know-it-all Nintendo rep Howard Phillips, who used his insider info to humiliate a small child through a few dozen very entertaining and expertly drawn installments. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Bill...
Jeremy Parish and Anthony Schwader look back at the checkered history of publisher Kemco-Seika—from iffy original works to beloved conversions of computer classics. And lots of Crazy Castles.
Before the launch of the go-go '90s, a certain green foursome closed out the decade with a bang. Though the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles entered the comic book world in 1984 and debuted on television in 1987, 1989 belonged to the Turtles, with weekday cartoon episodes, a movie in the works, and, at long last, a chance to be the Ninja Turtles in both console and arcade forms. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Ray Barnholt ( check out his issue of SCROLL on the TMN...
Tim Hartman and Greg Caldwell from Retrotainment talk to Jeremy Parish about the art and science of creating brand-new NES games such as Full Quiet.
By patron request, Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey revisit the topic of classic console launch lineups from Atari 2600 to Super NES with Chris Kohler and Steve Lin. How did these first games speak to their systems—and to the state of gaming at the time?
The second part of our journey into roguelike history sees experts Jason Wilson and John Harris join Bob Mackey and Jeremy Parish to explore the protoplasmic origins of the genre's console renditions through the near-perfection of Shiren the Wanderer.
