It's time for [gasp] another annual tradition: The Year-In-Review Revue. And in keeping with tradition, my best efforts to structure this in a way that would allow us to get through all the planned years turned out to be for naught thanks to Benj and Jared dropping some major Magnavox Odyssey Knowledge Bombs. A podcast that allows information and conversation to get in the way of the intended s...
2021-12-20 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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December 17, 2011: More like PlayStation Culpa
by Diamond Feit
The older I get, the more I realize the importance of revisiting past failures. I don't mean dwelling on my...
2021-12-19 14:01:01 +0000 UTC
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It's time once again for the annual journey to Retronauts' Christmas locale for another holiday treat. And this year, we're kicking off our eleventh yuletide celebration with a look at the third and final Pokemon album to grace our ears: 2001's Totally Pokemon. Though the fad had slowed slightly by the turn of the 21st century, our friends at Rave Music managed to assemble one more col...
2021-12-17 08:00:03 +0000 UTC
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We've talked about the World Warrior, we've talked about its many ports and revisions, now it's time to talk about All The Rest. Street Fighter II was so huge, it quickly spread beyond the world of games into other media. What kin...
2021-12-13 11:01:02 +0000 UTC
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December 6, 1991: Think of this as Mega Man 2 2
by Diamond Feit
When it comes to video games, the magic word is "progress." Since the earliest days when Pong sho...
2021-12-12 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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We have a patron request this week for a game that is somehow more than eligible for discussion under our 10-year cutoff rule! How is that possible? Can it really be that old? Apparently so.
But it makes sense that this topic would have a slippery sense of placement in time: Radiant Historia was all about breaking the boundaries of linear time in order to rejigger history. ...
2021-12-06 14:00:01 +0000 UTC
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November 1991: "Leh-tsoo-bah!"
by Diamond Feit
Are you familiar with the Japanese word "isekai"? It's a popular genre of fiction wherein the hero leaves the familiar worl...
2021-12-05 14:00:07 +0000 UTC
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I vowed 12 months ago that 2021 would be the Year of Golgo 13—by which I meant I was going to publish a couple of videos about Golgo 13 games. I did not expect 2021 to be the one where Golgo 13 made international news because its creator passed away after working on the series for more than 50 years! But here we are, and with the topic front of mind for multiple rea...
2021-12-03 14:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Can you believe it? Our little podcast has now been around for 15 years! (That's the crystal anniversary for all of you out shopping for gifts.) So instead of reflecting on classic games this week, we've decided to do some self-reflection by talking about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going on this wacky rollercoaster we call "podcasting." And, in the back of half of ...
2021-11-29 08:00:03 +0000 UTC
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November 25, 1991: Legendary men debut
by Diamond Feit
When we speak of Street Fighter II changing the medium of video games, it wasn't overnight. Capcom's seque...
2021-11-28 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Our string of 20th anniversary extravaganzas finally comes to an end this week as we offer a little love to the GameCube, too. In celebration of the best launch-window release for GameCube, we look back at the charming, inventive, and long-overdue-for-that-sequel-Miyamoto-keeps-promising Pikmin series.
Description:
Henry Gilbert, Bryan Auer, and Wesley Fenl...
2021-11-22 14:00:01 +0000 UTC
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November 15, 2001: The king has stumbled. Long live the king.
by Diamond Feit
Annual franchises get a bad rap. We point at big-budget brands like Assassin's Creed
2021-11-21 14:01:13 +0000 UTC
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Back in 1992, a group of artists who'd previously honed their skills on Tiny Toon Adventures came together and redefined the Caped Crusader for a new generation. Their creation? Batman: The Animated Series, a phenomenal weekday cartoon that many still swear by as the definitive Batman adaptation. And with a new reboot on the way, there's never been a better time to look back on B:TAS, the games...
2021-11-19 08:00:04 +0000 UTC
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As promised, the sorta-second part of our Xbox anniversary coverage. A note from this episode's host, Stuart:
Halo, good evening, and welcome to this Chief-tastic installment of Retronauts—the ARBITER of retrogaming podcasts! Join host Stuart Gipp, returning guest John Linneman and Master Chief Jeremy Parish for a deep dive into the inaugural entry of Bungie's incredible Halo s...
2021-11-15 12:44:50 +0000 UTC
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November 1991: Nintendo's mightiest hero gets her second shot at stardom
by Diamond Feit
Sequels are never a given, regardless of the medium. True, as costs rise and the ...
2021-11-14 13:01:01 +0000 UTC
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In one sense, this episode is the first of a two-parter—next week we'll be looking at Xbox's big debut killer app, Halo. In another sense, this is a standalone episode dedicated wholly to the larger Xbox universe. It's like Obi-Wan says... something something certain point of view.
Kat, Stuart, and Ray join me this week to help cope with the reality that Xbox is, indeed, 20 damn years o...
2021-11-08 14:00:01 +0000 UTC
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November 2, 2011: We're going to need a bigger slime
by Diamond Feit
This is one of the hardest columns I've had to write. I'm a positive person by choice (because I've l...
2021-11-07 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Want to feel old? This is Metal Gear Solid 2's surreal treatise on digital information's devastating impact on society and democracy today:
But I kid! Well, not entirely. I only regret that we recorded this Metal Gear Solid 2 retrospective about a month ago and therefore missed ...
2021-11-05 13:00:00 +0000 UTC
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October 31, 1991: Crack that whip...wiggly whip!
by Diamond Feit
Why a whip?
There is no shortage of stories about vampires, and all of them have their own guidelin...
2021-10-31 13:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Video games were but the fevered dream of a madman when Charles Addams invented his creepy, kooky cartoon family 85 years ago, but in the futuristic year of 2021, Gomez and his clan of freaks have quite the collection of interactive adaptations under their belts—most of them designed to make children as miserable as Wednesday herself. On this episode of Retronauts, celebrate Halloween as
2021-10-31 07:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey, it's that one guy! The one major Mario character we haven't discussed in elaborate depth yet. You know the one. We're finally talking about him, which means we're probably done with Mario characters? I guess there's always the possibility of a patron request to talk about, I dunno, Bowser Jr. or something. But hopefully not.
Edits by Greg Leahy, and cover art by Ama...
2021-10-25 12:00:00 +0000 UTC
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October 18, 2011: When you get caught between a loon and Gotham City
by Diamond Feit
Holy rebounds, Batman! After a few shaky years of lousy scripts, directors drop...
2021-10-24 13:01:02 +0000 UTC
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2011 amounted to a fantastic year for video games, but one of the most surprising releases of the year came in the form of Dark Souls. A sequel to a game Sony didn't even want to release in America, Dark Souls took advantage of a higher budget and lessons learned from Demon's Souls for an installment that would not only shape the direction of the series, but game design as a whole. On this epis...
2021-10-22 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Hey, folks, Jeremy here to share the 411 on Skyrim.
Podcast humor!
I'm going to be honest: This topic was chosen in one part because Skyrim was one of the biggest and most influential games to arrive in the absolutely gobsmackingly content-packed fall of 2011. And in part because the game's extremely long legs mean it really doesn't feel lik...
2021-10-18 12:00:06 +0000 UTC
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October 11, 1996: Mortal Kombat counts to 3 thrice
by Diamond Feit
There's not much I miss about the 1990s. The fashion trends 2021-10-17 13:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Following hot on the heels of our extremely correct and authoritative Mega Man Ranking Hootenanny, newly minted co-host Nadia Oxford steps in to force Jeremy Parish and Kurt Kalata to apply similar academic rigor to the Castlevania franchise (just in time for the series' 35th anniversary, an...
2021-10-11 13:00:01 +0000 UTC
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October 1981: Hell is empty and all the devils are here
by Diamond Feit
Do you believe hell is real? I grew up in a non-Christian household, so I viewed the existence ...
2021-10-10 13:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Today's post is actually only part one of this episode. Part two will be coming next week, in the form of the visual companion promised in the episode. (I'd post it now, but I'm off for another recording weekend and ran out of time amidst all the prep work.)
After all, this episode is about game manuals: The tactile physicality of them, the experience of reading them... basically, i...
2021-10-08 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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When the plucky developer Wolf Team set out to make a Super Famicom RPG on a grand scale in the mid-90s, the resulting production nearly destroyed the group, but resulted in Tales of Phantasia. Now, nearly 26 years later, the Tales of series stands as one of the few b-tier RPG brands from the 90s that's still going strong with regular installments, while the Star Oceans and Wild Armses of the w...
2021-10-04 07:01:01 +0000 UTC
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September 1991: Draw, Konami!
by Diamond Feit
I don't know if coincidences are real or if everything we encounter is a deliberate arrangement of events for the benefit...
2021-10-03 13:01:04 +0000 UTC
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