Retronauts? This here is Legonauts. Thanks to Patreon supporter Jeff Vlasek, we're taking a listenable look at the lucrative Lego license. Star Wars, Batman, even a quick squint at Harry Potter—if you can build it, and they made it into a video game, we're discussing it. Unless it's not one of ...
2021-09-27 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
September 26, 2001: Star Trek boldly goes backwards
by Diamond Feit
Chocobos! For over three decades, these large, flightless friends have been a mainstay in the Final Fantasy series, with their roles growing from glorified horses to creations that sustained several spinoffs. But just what are Chocobos, why were they invented, how have they changed over the years...
2021-09-24 07:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
I did not blink when the PlayStation 2 turned 20 years old in 2020, but now that some of its biggest hits are turning 20, these anniversaries are starting to get to me. Case in point: Grand Theft Auto III was originally released in October of 2001, after a brief delay caused by you-know-...
2021-09-20 14:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
September 14, 2001: Nintendo squares off against PlayStation and Xbox with a cube
by Diamond Feit
Hi everyone,
In 2021, Patreon started allowing creators to offer annual (instead of monthly) memberships to patrons. And to make a short story even shorter, we just flipped that switch. So if you'd like to sign up for a year of the Retronauts Patreon, you'd save 10% compared to paying for 1...
2021-09-18 17:56:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey folks,
In a classic case of "Wanna feel old?" the Retronauts podcast turns 15 next month! And since things are still COVIDy out there and we can't have a proper in-person celebration like we sh...
2021-09-17 17:20:11 +0000 UTC View Post
August 6, 1986: Peace in space sells...but who's buying?
by Diamond Feit
I suppose you were expecting a "podcast not found" joke this episode, but no dice! Instead, all you get is a couple of great conversations about video games.
First, Bill Nielsen joins us to help field his own patron request to discuss Gravity Rush (also feat. myself and Todd Ciolek...
2021-09-13 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
September 11, 2001
by Diamond Feit
It was a Tuesday. An extremely ordinary Tuesday.
I was driving to work at the post office in Armonk, New York, just as I did every day for the previous four years. It was a lousy job that I did solely for the paycheck,...
2021-09-12 13:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Look, I know. We've talked about Metroid before. More than once. But how often is it that you can slot an episode right at the midpoint between a franchise's 35th anniversary and the release of its first proper sequel in 19 years? Especially when said franchise is so well loved by the ca...
2021-09-10 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
35 years ago, a tiny team at Nintendo R&D1 crunched their way through a the development of a weird little game called Kid Icarus: a quirky, slightly alienating action-RPG starring a chubby angel who can't stop falling through platforms. Despite the lead character's prevalence in marketing fro...
2021-09-06 07:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
We're doing a bit of cleaning up behind the scenes at the Retronauts Patreon, and one change we've made can mostly be chalked up to our good friend COVID-19. Remember that guy? He's been making our lives...
2021-09-03 22:49:22 +0000 UTC View Post
July 31, 2011: Love is not love which alters when it columbidae finds
by Diamond Feit
I don't think this news will surprise anyone, but I had an extremely lonely ado...
2021-09-01 13:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post
We have a patron episode this week about a topic that is frankly far more expansive than a single episode could begin to hope to tackle! Per Andrew Oliveira, we have begun The Kirby Discourse. How much Discourse did we tackle in a single recording session? Uhhh, not much. In the space of an hour ...
2021-08-30 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
August 23, 2001: Slash Slash Boom
by Diamond Feit
I'd like to think...
2021-08-29 13:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
For the past 43 years, Garfield has been an ever-present and extremely popular orange blob within the dwindling world of newspaper comics, and spawned an Indiana-based empire for creator Jim Davis. And with said empire came the creation of landfill-clogging merchandise, which, of course, included...
2021-08-27 07:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
July 19, 1991: Final Fantasy gets twice the bits and twice the emotion
by Diamond Feit
It's been a long, long time since a Retronauts East session has happened in person. Something about a lockdown? Anyway, it happened again! And probably won't happen again, due to changing life circumstances—but don't worry, Retronauts East fans. This lineup isn't going away, just working a litt...
2021-08-23 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
July 12, 1991: Konami delivers unto Game Boy owners their New Messiah
by Diamond Feit
We try to cover the full span of video game history as much as we can on this show, but we're not ashamed to admit that sometimes we play favorites. And so, an episode on the Super NES's early days, tied to the system's 30th anniversary. Have we talked about the NES before? Yes. Will we talk abou...
2021-08-16 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Video games can be quite astonishing sometimes! For example, we're constantly astonished that a series as cool and offbeat as Wario Land exists. We're also astonished that, despite them collectively being one of the best things in the Nintendo library, they don't make 'em anymore. It's b...
2021-08-13 11:25:59 +0000 UTC View Post
When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles struck gold at the start of the '90s, everyone wanted the piece of the action. That included British developer Rare, who created a similar group of green heroes to capitalize on Turtlemania: the Battletoads. Though it's mostly remembered for a singular stage with...
2021-08-09 07:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
In what may well be an all-time Retronauts record for rapid topic follow-ups—or at least for the episodes I've hosted—this week we field a patron request from Andrew Duff to create a sequel (or is that sequels?) to Episode 380, which focused on Breath of Fire and its first s...
2021-08-02 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
In the early '00s, a Capcom employee named Shu Takumi had a simple dream about making an adventure game about the many trials of a harried defense attorney. 20 years later, the Ace Attorney series spans a whopping 11 games—with two long-awaited titles finally seeing an English language release ...
2021-07-30 07:01:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Over the past couple of years, we've dedicated several episodes to the legacy of the Mario franchise beyond the main man himself. The vast reach and proliferation of Mario games, combined with its relatively small cast, means their supporting characters have a unique place in video gaming that ca...
2021-07-26 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
A long-overdue episode this week, as Christopher Hansen asked us to tackle Koei sims (particularly Romance of the Three Kingdoms) back in December 2019. The chaos of the following year didn't do any favors for my efforts to find Retronauts regulars who were comfortable weighing in on a hefty and ...
2021-07-19 13:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Alright, this is it: The last chance I'm giving you to take a breath with one of these light, frothy, movie-focused podcast episodes. From here on out, most of the rest of 2021 is going to be some pretty intensive anniversary episodes... lots of them with a value of "20" factoring into the equati...
2021-07-16 14:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Nearly a decade after the last entry, Telltale Games launched Tales of Monkey Island, an episodic take on the classic adventure series—and the first installment in nearly 20 years with input from creator Ron Gilbert. And while it suffers from some of the drawbacks of Telltale's format, this fiv...
2021-07-12 07:01:03 +0000 UTC View Post
