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 ga...
2019-08-30 22:48:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Another Final Fantasy episode already? Yeah, so it goes. We were planning to hold this one back for a few months, but then Square Enix had to go and announce a super-short lead time for the release of the remastered version of the game. What can ya do?
2019-08-26 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Or should that be "Strider Hiryu"? In any case, I've been wanting to gush about Strider all year long, since (1) the game turned 30 this spring and also (2) rocks. So here it is: 90 minutes of gushing about Strider. Please do not be disconcerted by my effusive joy here.—Je...
2019-08-19 13:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
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 P...
2019-08-16 18:25:50 +0000 UTC View Post
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-pro...
2019-08-12 07:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings! Can you believe we haven't had a Super Smash Bros. episode in all these years? Or... that maybe we've done one and I've completely forgotten it? I don't know how these things work.
This was going to be a "classic roots" episode focused on the inspirations behind a curren...
2019-08-05 14:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
This week brings us another developer interview, this time with a composer. I haven't done one of these in a while, but it was a pleasure to speak to Nathan McCree about his work on one of the most memorable and inventively crafted game scores of all time: Core Designs' original Tomb Raider 2019-08-02 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Another patron request episode is coming at you this week. This time, we survey the X-Wing series at the behest of Victor Romero. That's just games with X-Wing (or TIE Fighter) in the title; no other Star Wars games allowed. Handily, we just happened to know no...
2019-07-29 12:46:11 +0000 UTC View Post
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 a...
2019-07-22 20:10:20 +0000 UTC View Post
You wrote to us, now we finally read what you had to say. This episode serves as a catch-up session for three of the six topics we currently have outstanding, unread letters about—some of which haven't seen their primary topics explored in a published episode yet. Consider this a preview. Those...
2019-07-19 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We've talked about Spider-Man games a few times over the past couple of years, it's true. But have we ever before gotten the designer of the most-beloved Spider-Man game of all time to recount his experiences creating the game? No, we have not. And that is why you should listen ...
2019-07-15 12:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Yeah, it's another one of our Final Fantasy deep dives. I bumped this one forward in the schedule because the game in question—Final Fantasy Tactics—has been in the air a lot lately. Most recently, several of Final Fantasy XIV's expansions have delved into the world...
2019-07-08 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
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 Ph...
2019-07-05 23:54:45 +0000 UTC View Post
I think this is the last remnant of our Midwest Gaming Classic trip. We've talked about Game Boy, Virtual Boy, and uhhh... Game Boy? But also, I chatted with Anthony Schwader about Kemco-Seika, by his request, which it turns out he deeply regretted once we got into the topic. Not that Kemco's gam...
2019-07-01 14:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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, ...
2019-06-24 07:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
This week's episode has been in the can for a while, waiting for a quiet week for us to drop a low-key bonus conversation on you. I caught up with the guys from Retrotainment back at Portland Retro Gaming Expo last fall to talk about the challenges of creating all-new video games for defunct syst...
2019-06-21 13:43:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Another patron request this week—this time for a topic we actually covered with our very first relaunch episode back in 2013! Because we had already tackled the idea of console launches, we decided to take a fresh angle this time around. Besides covering the games that appeared at launch on sys...
2019-06-17 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
This week is a patron request episode... sort of. The request was specifically to cover Konami's PS1 roguelike Azure Dreams, which dovetailed neatly with my intention to tackle console roguelikes in general one of these days. Thus, I decided to combine the two. Sensible, right?
... 2019-06-10 14:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Now that Disney's live-action Aladdin movie is out, we finally have a great excuse to jump back in time 25 years to examine the animated version of that property—one that was oddly important to the 16-bit console wars. Virgin Interactive's Genesis game mostly overshadowed Capcom's SNES interpre...
2019-06-07 07:23:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Resident Evil 4 has quietly been one of the most influential games of the past 20 years, and now that a shiny new port is available on the Nintendo Switch, there's never been a better time to dig into the game that redefined the third-person shooter genre. Capcom took an incredible risk by throwi...
2019-06-04 02:26:22 +0000 UTC View Post
A long time ago, I created a Retronauts Micro overview of the Virtual Boy. Now, I've actually played the system's entire library (as you may have seen ) and have a much different opinion of the platform. Well, the console's still a mess. But the games? Some of them were alarmingly good.<...
2019-05-27 14:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
This week's episode is one of those rare cases where the old "Retronauts Micro" appellation actually would have worked. This was originally recorded as a segment for what was going to be a larger production with the Heiankyo Alien talk from Midwest Gaming Classic, but since that presentation ende...
2019-05-24 14:36:32 +0000 UTC View Post
You know, I'm just going to let this episode's description speak for itself:
Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt, and Caty McCarthy look to the present to talk about a game that succeeds by looking to the past: Sega's 2017 hit Sonic Mania. See, we CAN say nice things about ...
2019-05-20 15:10:59 +0000 UTC View Post
There's another media-focused episode for you this week, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of a film that has had a profound influence on video games: Ridley Scott's Alien. Of course, we also talk about the games based directly on the movie, too. Although somehow I had a giant brain...
2019-05-13 14:05:33 +0000 UTC View Post
This time on Retronauts, we're talking about something that's rarely a featured topic on the show: ourselves! On this special Friday installment, Gary Butterfield and 2019-05-10 07:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey, it's another "big picture" topic—coming right on the heels of last week's rental discussion. This time, engineer and Flip Grip accessory design Mike Choi joins me and Bob to look back on some of the most aesthetically appealing game consoles of all time. It's an exercise in using your imag...
2019-05-06 14:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostHi all, welcome to May! A few of you have contacted us to say that your advance RSS feed isn't working. You're not alone; apparently this is a system-wide issue. It's out of our hands, I'm afraid, but Patreon just send out this message that (we hope) will be of use to you:
Hey creators,...
2019-05-02 00:17:11 +0000 UTC View Post
This one's been percolating for a long time. Like, a year, almost. But hey, here it is, and what do you know? Because we're talking about experiences from 20-30 years ago, the conversation hasn't aged a bit. Except the one part where someone mentions it being 2018. Well, we almost pulled...
2019-04-29 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
This week's bonus episode… makes me kind of glad we have the "bonus episode" designation. This was recorded live at Midwest Gaming Classic a couple of weekends ago, and that means the audio isn't exactly studio-grade. The first section (the 40-minute main event panel with myself, Bob, Kohler, a...
2019-04-26 14:52:50 +0000 UTC View Post
This time around, we're shining the spotlight on another newer game that, like Shovel Knight, feels like the platonic ideal of a specific retro experience. If you ever liked Harvest Moon, still like Harvest Moon, or fell off the series years ago, Stardew Valley is the game for you: it takes the f...
2019-04-23 02:28:33 +0000 UTC View Post