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2 worthy video game podcasts


S1500

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So what possesses one to buy these? "Hey here's this new (game) clone for (classic system), it's new & I must have it" or "hmm I'll get it to see how it looks & plays" "I liked that game 30 yrs back, now I wanna play this rehash version" or what?

 

& is the price (which often seems high to me) not an issue, esp. when most gamers own more than one version of same game? I'm guessing not for collectors.

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for a lot of games, the new homebrews fix what was broken. the new Donkey Kong on Intellivision fixed the terrible coleco version. all the pac man ports try to make up for VCS pac man. there are a lot of games that never received ports back in the day.

 

the old games are a proven commodity, and it's cool to see the originals play correctly.

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They can do a lot more stuff with the 2600 these days, plus the homebrewers are more concerned with putting out a quality product than the bottom line. I bought the first 2600 homebrew but it became cost-prohibitive for me right away to buy anymore (I moved and made less money, nothing to do with the price). I think it's cool to have missing arcade ports like Chris said, I really like the new Rally X that Ed Fries is doing. And holy fuck, if you haven't tried Juno First, go do that right now, it's amazing. But I don't get the demakes. It's great that you can squeeze Super Mario Bros. into a 2600 cart, but I'm going to play the NES version if I want to play it.

 

There's so many homebrews to keep track of, and some of them make me wonder why the hell people would spend their free time programming a 2600 game. Why do we need Flappy Bird on the 2600? Again, like Chris said, there are very few original ideas in homebrews. I think that happened more in the 90s. There was an awesome game I played at a friend's house that fits in this category, but I can't recall the name unfortunately.

 

Plus, homebrews make my job harder, I haven't even done any yet. I know, first world problems. :) I do have one coming up in the next few months though.

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It was nice to see Scramble ported to the '99-4A, but it was never marketed as a cart. Gorf on the Jaguar seemed more like a labor of love, which then turned into a horribly over-valued homebrew. It would be easier to get a Gorf cabinet than that.

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as for demakes, Halo 2600 is an achievement. It had an official blessing from Microsoft, and rather than try to make a first person shooter, it took elements of the Halo universe and reimagined them for the VCS. It also made mainstream headlines and got people interested in the 2600 that would otherwise have zero interest. As much as I hate to admit it, if your hobby is not growing, it is shrinking. Halo 2600 was a shot in the arm to the 2600 scene.

 

(even though it is not the best homebrew game out there, it is more than good enough to serve its purpose)

Edited by chrisbid
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Yeah, I don’t really get the allure of classic games being homebrewed for old consoles. Now, if it’s a game I like, sometimes it’s interesting to see what it looks and plays like on an old console, just out of nerdy curiosity. But that curiosity is quickly satiated with a YouTube video, and I’m back to where I started—just playing the original game on MAME or on the platform from whence it came (hey, that rhymes).

 

Some of them are really well done, to be sure. I’m a big fan of the Ladybug arcade game, and when I played the 2600 homebrew, I thought it was fantastic. Still, technical achievement aside, the Atari 2600 is not where I’m going to play Ladybug if the urge comes over me; it’ll be on my MAME cabinet. If I didn’t have a MAME cabinet, it would be on my desktop PC with the keyboard.

 

As for de-makes, I don’t know what to say about those either. Again, marvels of programming prowess as they often are, they’re still games that, in order to translate into a genuinely entertaining experience, need way more horsepower than what can be mustered by a superannuated hardware platform such as the Atari 2600.

 

I think I’d be much more open to “original” game ideas being homebrewed for the old systems. In fact, in the case of the 2600, I’ve always preferred the original games from Activision and the like over the hopelessly diluted arcade ports, even back in the 80’s. The fact that it’s so easy to play the original arcade games at home makes the ports even more unnecessary and redundant (for me, anyway… YMMV). What made Activision so great was that they designed games from the ground up to take full advantage of what was possible on the VCS, rather than trying to fake what was impossible.

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i like homebrews of games that were supposed to be released for a console but were not. i think it is neat someone can finish off a proto or write the game from scratch looking at old concept art. i am looking forward to the joust proto being finished into a cart for the colecovision. i have a super game module on order and looking forward to playing the much improved donkey kong. although the one for the adam computer i have been playing is pretty good. there were several games on the colecovision box that never game out such as tunnels and trolls that i have seen a hombrewer working on one which is awesome. the only thing i dont like about the homebrew scene is the exclusive releases at shows.

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Deja Vu* warning: RetroCollect. It downloaded just about every episode of RC again for no reason. The Retro League was doing that too from server moving, so I had to unsubscribe for a bit. And yet still iTunes is re-downloading episodes of other 'casts I've already listened to.

 

I think Retro Obscura is going for the record of most podcast footage published for a month, beating out RGR and Intellivisonaires by a factor of 2x.

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I think Retro Obscura is going for the record of most podcast footage published for a month, beating out RGR and Intellivisonaires by a factor of 2x.

Yes, they are quite prolific! And it's a really good show as well. That said, 5 hours and 40 minutes of The Intellivisionaries (episode 9) is almost done uploading...

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My kids learned to play Xybots last night, so on a mini-kick I went back to find the past ArmchairArcade Xybots ep. (The best one IMO ) & cant find it. I only see a bunch of MattChats & Lord British stuff.

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CORGScon is this Saturday!

http://corgs-con.webs.com

Come visit Now You're Playing with Podcast's booth! Here are the events we will be holding...

9am-10am: early bird hour
11am: Chu Chu Rocket Tournament
12:30pm: Smithereens! Tournament
2pm: Video Game Jeopardy!
3:30pm: Live podcast with guest Michael Thomasson, the owner of the World's Largest Video Game Collection.

Come join us Saturday!

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The Jeopardy episode is a hoot. Chris, you know your retro gaming "games" between this and Cards against Retro.

 

I would have put for the final Jeopardy answer: "dbsirhc", which would send the host back to his dimension.

Edited by S1500
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i found a 2002 classroom jeopardy console on shopgoodwill for 30 bucks. the new models go for over 400 dollars, so this was a steal.

 

Neat. Was the "round end" sound truncated the "chime in" sound part of that?

 

Perhaps the next retro game game show could be Starcade. But with much harder questions & games to play. Watching the Starcade episodes 30 years later, they were super-easy.

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the single note "out of time" sound is used whenever the host presses a button to select a question or to move the cursor. its a bit annoying on the recording but live it was barely noticeable.

 

i have an idea for a modified version of starcade. now that i have a quality set of buzzers, i need to experiment.

Edited by chrisbid
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the single note "out of time" sound is used whenever the host presses a button to select a question or to move the cursor. its a bit annoying on the recording but live it was barely noticeable.

 

i have an idea for a modified version of starcade. now that i have a quality set of buzzers, i need to experiment.

Chris. Let's put something together for CGE at The Intellivisionaries booth. I'd love to have you there doing this with / for us.

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You pulled off the Jeopardy! game very well, with (so it seems on the recording) minimal interruptions from loser hecklers.

 

"NAMCO!!"

"do we have a yeller? No yelling!"

 

 

(BTW any "gamer" unfamiliar with the Zelda theme should've been shown the door. Even I know it & I've played exactly 2 Zelda games in my life, LTTP & that downloadable DSi one)

Edited by RJ
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