Ep. 31: Spacewar!: Dual to the Death

Our podcasting duo takes us back to the dawning of real-time computer games: Spacewar! Alex Smith joins us for round two, being our second second-time guest, to pairaphrase the history of this 2-player game of binary ships thrusting around a gravity-well star, who (reluctantly) wrote it, who modded it, who played it, and who created…

Ep. 30: Bejeweled: A Match 3 Made in Heaven

Ben Hanson returns to the show to bring us The Oral History Of PopCap Games, a not 4 hour long video in which we learn how the “colors game” spawned the casual juggernaut Bejeweled, the black sheep in the corner made all the money, the PopCap Burrito won’t give us Plants Vs Zombies on our…

Ep. 29: Chronological + Nintendo = Chrontendo

Dr. Sparkle, the creator of Chrontendo, takes us through his more than decade long project to analyze every commercially released game for the NES and Famicom in chronological order while simultaneously spinning off this already massive show into two more: Chronsega and Chronturbo. If you’re ever looking for something to do with your free time,…

Ep. 28: Get in, Loser. We’re talking Mean Girls with Raven Simone

Raven Simone takes us down the research rabbit hole she fell into while making her video The Girl Games Of Lost Media – Documentary. With few clues to follow, she started researching the Mean Girls game, but soon found herself chasing down info on Clueless and Pretty in Pink as well, discovering that research can…

Ep. 27: The Lost (at Sea) Monkey Island Movie with Jack Yarwood

Should Monkey Island be made into a movie? Could it be? Jack Yarwood lays out the history of how this project almost came to be as well as why it gave up the ghost, instead. He, Frank, and Kelsey cross swords over if this could have been a glorious triumph*, like Super Mario Bros.: The…

Ep. 26: MAME: The Eternally Unfinished Research Project with David Haywood

David Haywood, AKA Haze, discusses the MAME software preservation project: a collaborative, encyclopedic haven and emulator for all those ‘forgotten’ games of our past. In December 2020, while most of us were cowering under a table feebly awaiting the fresh start of the new year, David took a look back at the community’s accomplishments within…

Ep. 25: Dueling in Wild Gunman ‘74 with Kate Willaert

Author, documentarian, artist, guest VGHF blogger, and wild west gunslinger Kate Willaert claims the title of First FMV Game for this fast draw pistol duelling simulator in her recent article Wild Gunman ‘74: The Forgotten First FMV Game and video by the same name. She’s a straight shooter as we hit topics of the effect…

Ep. 24: Reliving Nintendo Soundtracks with The Brickster

Musical Archeologist and Demo Stylist (professions we made up just now), The Brickster, explains how he and his colleagues collaborate to recreate music from some of our favorite retro games in a richer, uncompressed, true-to-each-instrument style. The recently viral music from Super Mario World Restored – Fortress brought this unique form of historical research, along…

Ep. 23: Working on Donkey Kong Country and Dinosaur Planet with Kev Bayliss & David Wise

You and Diddy better jump inside that explosive barrel and get tossed into this minecart because we are going on a trip! This week we’re playing co-op with TWO guests at the same time. We meant to have artist Kev Bayliss and composer (not music engineer) David Wise join us to reminisce about Dinosaur Planet,…

Ep. 22: Remembering Atari with Howard Scott Warshaw

Discussing his new book, Once Upon Atari: How I Made History by Killing an Industry, Howard Scott Warshaw takes us on a trip through his career starting with how he got to Atari (and how he almost didn’t), what he did there (including The Game That Shall Not be Named), and the amazing things he’s…