Arrggh! A Video Game Podcast from The Waffling Taylors

First of all, we'd like to thank the amazing yurricanes for working with us to create the featured image for this episode. I think you'll agree that it's an amazing piece of art, and you should definitely check out their work.

We'd also like to thank Georgie (aka ChapSketch) for working with Squidge on the episode artwork for the entire New Cupboard of Shame series. Head on over to Georgie's Etsy page to commission some work from her. You really should, as she's blooming brilliant.

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

Squidge was fully in charge of hosting, producing and editing this episode. As such, he decided to leave the few swears in the episode without bleeping them. This was done for comedy reasons, as we felt that there is very little in the episode which could offend most listeners.

Please listen responsibly

Show Notes

Squidge wanted to take a shiny new look at The Cupboard of Shame. The difference being that he wanted to invite some familiar voices onto the show, one at a time, and discuss one game that they want to jettison into the Cupboard of Shame. For his second episode on the eponymous - and totally real cupboard - cupboard, he could think of none better than Lulu.

As a quick reminder, Squidge describes The Cupboard of Shame as:

The idea behind it is games that you have bought in your past, played it, but you don't know why you bought [them] but you did anyway.
Any complaints that you have about the game; why you want to stick it in the Cupboard of Shame. We'll talk about the good points and the bad points [of the game], and we'll share some fun facts about the game.
- Squidge

Previous Entries into the Cupboard of Shame

The Cupboard of Shame reboot has only seen one entry so far, which was when Chief Problems decided that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim needed to be stored behind the walnut doors of destiny. You can hear Chief's reasoning behind his choice on episode 136 - which you can listen to here.

Prior to the Cupboard of Shame reboot, Squidge has challenged both G and himself to put some titles into the Cupboard of Shame. The titles that they chose include:

• Iron Man the Movie Video Game
• WET
• Rambo: The Video Game
• Crackdown
• Final Fantasy XIII

You can hear their discussion on these games (and a few more) in episode 47: The Cupboard of Shame - here's a link to that episode.

Lulu's Chosen Game

Squidge started this episode strongly:

Any road, we've gone completely off topic
- Squidge

And that was in the first three minutes of the episode. But very shortly after that, he asked Lulu for the title of the one game that she would like to discuss:

I did have a long think about this, I'll be perfectly honest. But every time I thought about it, one game kept coming up and it was: Chaos Legion
- Lulu

But before they could discuss the game, Squidge needed to describe the game's setup:

Two men, once friends, now have their fates tied together by the death of a young maiden. Each man holds the key to a sacred glyph that, when combined with the other two, can open the Gateway of Chaos and lead the people to the Red Moon.
- GameFaqs; https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/562317-chaos-legion

Talk about "dun dun duuuun"

He also wanted to give a description of when he first encountered the game - you know, for science and stuff:

It was 2003, I was 14. It was the weekend. Reallising as I woke up, that due to exceptional circumstances I was awake, it was very real to me that for the most of the day I would be unsupervised. Anything could happen.
However, I had recently picked up a game called "Chaos Legion", and hilarity ensued. As you might imagine
- Squidge

But why did Lulu buy this game?

I just remember seeing the trailer playing a lot in [my local GAME] store. And I really, really liked the style of it. It was kind of like gothic and a little bit steampunky, and that is entirely my jam.
- Lulu

What's So Bad About it?

Any discussion of a bad game needs to cover what's so bad about the game. So Squidge asked, "what's so bad about this game?"

I do remember 1) the controls being a little bit janky (and that's being nice), and 2) the gameplay being kinda repetitive.
- Lulu

Naff controls and repetitive gameplay is not what you want from a - pause for effect whilst we check the box - Capcom game?! Seriously? Capcom made this?

I remember thinking, "haven't I done this level already?" because they all started looking very, very samey. I know that with early Devil May Cry games they were corridor simulators. But at least with the Devil May Cry games, they had a good story. The Chaos Legion story felt a bit flat.
- Lulu

Another criticism was the difficulty and the repetitive nature of having to replay previous missions, multiple times in a row, in order to get the required exp level to play the next level.

Again, I play [Final Fantasy XIV] and that's just grinding [for experience points]. But there comes a point where you're just like, "I just want to progress." It doesn't feel like there's an end in sight.
- Lulu

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Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

At around 10:32, whilst discussing sandbox games, Jackal brings up the fact that titles like RimWorld allow you to safely explore very taboo subjects like cannibalism. We felt that it was important to keep this discussion in the episode; not because we support cannibalism, but more because we thought it was important to have the discussion about the fact that games allow us to build a fantasy world where we can explore these ideas and see what they are about.

At 34:16, when describing the beginnings of the project, Bird mentions that the game started out life as

sort of a $h!t post
- Bird

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

Squidge was MIA when we recorded this episode, so he isn't on this one. But Jay was on hand to interview Jackal and Bird from the Roadkill Software team. At the time of the recording, Roadkill Software were working on a brand new PC title called Fluff 'n Fury.

Fluff 'n Fury

Before they got sidetracked, Jay wanted to know about Fluff 'n Fury. And the Roadkill folks described it as:

It's basically an FPS shooter, sort of in the vein of Half-Life - well not really Half-Life. It would be a little unfair to call it Half-Life; more like a campaign of some sorts.
It'll also will feature a diverging cast. So you'll have to go through several different play-throughs to find every single level. And it will include some non-FPS segments as well
- Bird

Immediately, it sound rather intriguing and reminded us of the branching story-path of Sonic Adventure and similar titles - but with less in the way of embarrassing voice acting and audio levelling issues, we hope.

All this talk of mixing up the play styles had us talking about sandbox games, and how the sandbox genre - if you can call it that - is likely one of the most innovative in the industry right now. Being able to throw a player into a world with tools, vehicles, basic rules, and allow them to invent their own fun is truly game-changing - if you'll pardon the pun - with the greatest of them being Garry's Mod.

Favourite Sandbox Titles

A discussion of sandbox games would be incomplete without talking about some of our favourites. So Jay posed the question

What are some of your favourite sandbox games?
- Jay

• Bird
  • Pavlov VR
  • Subnautica
• Jackal
  • RimWorld
  • Stellaris

And this discussion on sandbox and sandbox-like games brings up the topic of being able to explore different ideas, political stances, behaviours, and taboos without worrying about any real-world results or potential side effects of those actions or thoughts.

It's not like you endorse this thing in real life, but what could happen in a diplomatic way if you go for it.
- Jackal

Another example that we bring up is the Postal series. We're all in agreement that very few (if any) players of those games endorse the ideas of over-the-top situations and behaviours in those games, but it does allow the player a safe space to explore the absurdity of the situation.

And of course, Jay takes a logical extreme using a recent release as an example:

At the time of recording [Pokémon Legends: Arceus] has just been released. Is that game endorsing running around, capturing [wild] animals, and stuffing them into small metallic boxes?
No. But it is encouraging people to go out into the world and have a look around at what there is to see and what there is to do.
- Jay

The Thunder Plain Games

For those who are new to the pod, we have a section called "Thunder Plain Games" which might be vaguely reminiscent of a certain programme on BBC Radio 4 - but for copyright reasons, it is completely different.

Imagine that you are in Final Fantasy X, and the Thunder Plains) is a place that you get banished to. And what we're going to do is we're going to open a portal to the Thunder Plains and, very nicely and politely, boot you through it. You will get help, maybe it will be tomorrow, maybe it will be in a week, maybe it will be in an hour.

To stop you from getting bored, we've said that we'll keep the portal open and we'll throw through up to three video games and everything you need to play them - including an Internet connection. The only rules are that you can't ask for help, because help is on the way, and you can't tell anyone that you're in the Thunder Plains.

So our question is: were we to do throw, boot, or yeet you through the portal, which games are we throwing through with you? And both Bird and Jackal obliged with the titles that they would take with them:

• Bird
  • Minecraft
• Jackal
  • Fallout 2 (with the Restoration Patch)

...

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

What have you been playing recently? Do you agree with the anonymous review that Chief read during this episode? What would you take with you to the Thunder Plains?

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Roadkill Software on Twitter
• Fallout 2 Restoration Project
• Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky

And have you left us a rating or review? We really like to hear back from listeners about our show, so check out https://wafflingtaylors.rocks/our-podcast/ for links to services where you can leave us some wonderful feedback.

The Waffling Taylors is a proud member of Jay and Jay Media. If you like this episode, please consider supporting our Podcasting Network. One $3 donation provides a week of hosting for all of our shows. You can support this show, and the othe...

If you like the sound of this, then you'll likely love the show we put together. Don't forget to subscribe (it's free!), and head over to https://wafflingtaylors.rocks to find out more about us.

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Content Warning

Squidge was fully in charge of hosting, producing and editing this episode. As such, he decided to leave the few swears in the episode without bleeping them. This was done for comedy reasons, as we felt that there is very little in the episode which could offend most listeners.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

Squidge wanted to take a shiny new look at The Cupboard of Shame. The difference being that he wanted to invite some familiar voices onto the show, one at a time, and discuss one game that they want to jettison into the Cupboard of Shame. Since this is the first episode in the new series, there was no better choice than Chief Problems.

For those who don't know, Chief was our very first guest, appearing on the very first episode of the podcast (released back in 2017) - aka "56 Games in 63 Minutes".

The Cupboard of Shame is something that Squidge describes as:

The idea behind it is games that you have bought in your past, played it, but you don't know why you bought [them] but you did anyway.
Any complaints that you have about the game; why you want to stick it in the Cupboard of Shame. We'll talk about the good points and the bad points [of the game], and we'll share some fun facts about the game
- Squidge

Previous Entries into the Cupboard of Shame

In previous episodes of the podcast, Squidge has challenged both G and himself to put some titles into the Cupboard of Shame. The titles that they chose include:

• Iron Man the Movie Video Game
• WET
• Rambo: The Video Game
• Crackdown
• Final Fantasy XIII

You can hear their discussion on these games (and a few more) in episode 47: The Cupboard of Shame - here's a link to that episode

Chief's Entry

Starting things off on the correct foot, Squidge asked of Chief:

What do you want to put into the Cupboard of Shame?
- Squidge

And Chief started the new series off with a truly controversial pick: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - specifically the PS3 version. But why is it shameful?

It's shameful in that I've never really finished it, and that I've given up on it.
That's not to say that it's a bad game, but it's definitely one of the games that I've not finished, just because I can't be bothered to push through to the end.
- Chief

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had passed Chief by and he hadn't even heard of Morrowind - talk about walking in, right in the middle of the story - and although he had never played any of the earlier entries, he knew that he was going to like Skyrim.

It's like your first Final Fantasy game
- Chief

And the discussion on similar C-RPGs - classic RPGs - of the time, brought up both Fallout and the Dragon Age series of titles, how they seemed more engaging than Skyrim, and how Skyrim's mapping system seemed overly complex.

Characters & Editions

Character creation seemed to be a sticking point for both Chief and Squidge. Not only is the character creation wizard in Skyrim that complex, but it seems that naming characters is also quite difficult for both of our intrepid hosts. But Chief came up with a source of inspiration:

When I watched Game of Thrones, I would just choose the names of the characters that I liked
- Chief

This reminded Chief that Bethesda had released several versions of the game for his console (PS3) at the time, including the Legendary Edition. And of course, he bought the Legendary Edition too

Basically [I bought it again] for the DLC.
The old Guard stuff wasn't bad. And you got to be on a horse, that was nice.
- Chief

Combat

But riding around on a horse wasn't enough to save the game for Chief:

You can just wander everywhere and it's quite picturesque. But the game is shocking, the combat is shocking. I mean, the magic combat is shocking.
- Chief

Which Squidge defends because Skyrim was a simplification of the combat and gameplay system of Morrowind, making it more accessible to gamers. And Morrowind lead to something that Squidge calls "The Bethesda Gambit":

With any Bethesda game you start, learn how it works, then you start again and you do a bit better. And then you just end up repeating it until you get the most optimum character with the least amount of wallops.
- Squidge

Why Chief Bought Skyrim Originally

Squidge asked what it was that made Chief buy Skyrim. Was it the boxart? Was it the fact that you could play as a dragon born? Squidge wanted to know what drew Chief to the game in the first place.

I definitely wasn't bothered about being the dragon born. I was interested in the world that you could be in... that was the selling point for me. The story was just $h!t.
- Chief

At least it wasn't as bad as Fallout '76, right?

The combination of the plot being both predictable and forgettable, and everyone in the world of Skyrim thinking that the player is the chosen one really turned Chief off. But this wasn't exclusive to Skyrim - or video games, really - as the trope of the player being the chosen one was in the series as early as Morrowind - if not earlier. However, since Chief had missed the earlier titles, this was lost to him.

[being chosen to run every group and faction in the world] is borderline ridiculous... I mean, The Witcher 3 does this, but it hides it well, or hides it better than Skyrim does... we don't give enough credit to the audience.
- Chief

...

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

What have you been playing recently? Do you agree with the anonymous review that Chief read during this episode? What would you take with you to the Thunder Plains?

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

This is the final part - of four - of a conversation with author and video game historian Steven L Kent, and is a collaboration between ourselves and Zoom Platform. Whilst this is an audio episode, it was originally recorded as a pair of video interviews. What we've done is cut the two video interviews into four parts and will be releasing them as audio episodes. But if you'd rather watch the first two parts as a video you'll find it here.

Don't forget to check out the other parts of the conversation:

• part one
• part two
• part three

And all four parts of our interview with Steven can be found here.

The Final Part

In his own words, Steven describes his books as

My books are called "The Ultimate History of Video Games".

Volume 1 starts out with Abraham Lincoln and Bagatelle, and goes all the way to 2000 and sort of the collapse of the Dreamcast - or it's about to collapse, you can tell that it's faltering - PlayStation 2 has been announced and is just coming out, and Xbox has been announced.

Book two has some overlap, because there will be some people who read volume 2 without reading volume 1, so it's got a bunch of overlap. But what's interesting is that I thought I'd be able to go from 2000 to the present, but I only got to 2012. So volume three should come out around 2026.
- Steven L Kent

As with part three of our discussion, we reached out to you all - aka, the community - for questions that you would like to as Steven. And we had some doosies of questions to go through. Starting with...

2) Which Was The Best Console?

this is question 2 because the first question was asked in the previous part

Our first question was from Unaffiliated JZ and it was:

Which was the best console ever, and why was it the SNES?
- Unaffiliated JZ

And this started a wonderful conversation about the 16-bit generation, how Steven thought that it dragged on for a little too long, and which were his favourite consoles.

I think that the Super NES was a fabulous console, I really do. Head and shoulders above its competitors. And when I say "its competitors," - here I am sticking my foot in my mouth again - really, truthfully I group the 3DO and the Jaguar in with the Super NES that I do with the Saturn and the PlayStation and the N64.
- Steven L Kent

And we all tended to agree with the time periods that Steven had chosen, as it had lead to huge innovation in video games, storytelling, gameplay, and technology. Jay also mentions one of his oft-told stories from Masters of Doom, Super Mario Bros. 3, and a Cease and Desist letter from Nintendo.

3) Retro Game Collecting of the Future

Would be interesting to also know their take on what modern titles will be historically relevant in 20 years.
What does a top 10 list of games look like in 20, 30 years? Will people be clamouring for a cartridge copy of breath of the wild?
- Glanks

Which is an amazing question that looks into the future of gaming. What _will_ retro game top-tens look like in 20 years? Will we all be writing op-eds about how

Video games?! Video games?! Pah! I was there at the start. There were 256 colours, 8 bits, and two buttons on your controller. And that was all you needed
- Crotchety old Jay

4) Sequels and Weird IP

The NES had a weird streak of taking an a completely different game and slapping nintendo IP on it and calling it a sequel - what are your thoughts on this?
- MadVikingGod

Which started a conversation about the best and worst sequels that video games have ever had - including Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros., Nintendo being incredibly progressive and Capcom being accidentally progressive as a way to get around the Nintendo seal of approval.

5) What About PC?

I’d love to learn their thoughts on PC gaming history, too. A lot of coverage seems to be centred around consoles (WoW being the exception). Like, what genres of games have PC gaming to thank (MMOs being the top of the list, I’d say)?
- Tyren

Interestingly, Steven was originally planning to write two separate books:

• One on the history of video game consoles
• One on the history of PC video games

But the biggest barrier was that PC gaming history is so sprawling; and, quite frankly, the history of video game consoles is much more interesting.

6) The Question of Difficulty

Do you think the older games are harder, or is it that the newer games are easier?
- Squidge

And Steven came out of left-field with his answer, but is completely and utterly right with what he says. And no, his point wasn't _just_ about the fact that arcade games were designed to be played for 5-10 seconds at a time.

When Defender came out, people said, "this is impossible! There are four buttons!"
- Steven L Kent

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

What have you been playing recently? Do you agree with the anonymous review that Chief read during this episode? What would you take with you to the Thunder Plains?

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Steven ...

Steven is someone who hasn't just written about the history of video games, he has lived it; meeting some of the biggest names in the industry. Steven was gracious enough to share some of his time with us. This week we discussed asked some more community questions, but which ones?

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

This is part three - of four - of a conversation with author and video game historian Steven L Kent, and is a collaboration between ourselves and Zoom Platform. Whilst this is an audio episode, it was originally recorded as a pair of video interviews. What we've done is cut the two video interviews into four parts and will be releasing them as audio episodes. But if you'd rather watch the first two parts as a video you'll find it here.

Don't forget to check out the other parts of the conversation:

• part one
• part two

And all four parts of our interview with Steven can be found here.

Part Three of Four

In his own words, Steven describes his books as

My books are called "The Ultimate History of Video Games".

Volume 1 starts out with Abraham Lincoln and Bagatelle, and goes all the way to 2000 and sort of the collapse of the Dreamcast - or it's about to collapse, you can tell that it's faltering - PlayStation 2 has been announced and is just coming out, and Xbox has been announced.

Book two has some overlap, because there will be some people who read volume 2 without reading volume 1, so it's got a bunch of overlap. But what's interesting is that I thought I'd be able to go from 2000 to the present, but I only got to 2012. So volume three should come out around 2026.
- Steven L Kent

The One Pixel and Tomb Raider

We all agreed that parts of the first Tomb Raider trilogy are a little overhyped, and treated with rose-tinted action-platformer glasses.

Whilst these games were important for both UK-based games development and the Girl Power movement in the mid-90s, a mixture of a slightly sluggish control scheme, magic pixel-based jumps, and the outright sleaze of the Tomb Raider commercials have put us off of those early entries.

Books, Christmas Time, and PSPs

Jay was hoping that he could get volume 2 of Steven's book read over the Christmas period and take part in Jolabokaflod. This is where family members will buy each other books and chocolates as Christmas gifts, but exchange those gifts on Christmas Eve. People then read those books, drink the cocoa, and fall asleep all snuggly-buggly style.

So what Jay is saying, Squidge, is that my books put him to sleep
- Steven L Kent

Unfortunately, Jay didn't get to read volume 2 over the Christmas period. But this did spark a discussion on the PSP and one of Squidge's favourite titles for the handheld that could: Phantasy Star portable.

I genuinely believe that the PSP and the PSP Vita were amazing pieces of hardware
- Jay

And the discussion on PSP lead to an anecdote about the day that he had a candid discussion with the head of Square-Enix about the console, and a discussion of the Sega Nomad - the portable Mega Drive/Genesis device.

Community Questions

Shortly after the first episode was recorded, we reached out to you all - aka, the community - for questions that you would like to as Steven. And it seemed fair to devote one and a half episodes (this part and the next) to posing those questions to Steven.

And the first question came from friend of the show Andrew Dickinson:

Steven is lovely. Say "hi!" from me
- Andrew

to which Steven broke in with:

Hi Andrew!
- Steven L Kent

And his question continued:

And ask him where he thinks gaming is headed now. Is VR the next big thing? Are we headed for a console-less cloud?
- Andrew

Which is an amazing question to start off the questions. And it lead to a real discussion about the fact that the human brain isn't meant to deal with VR.

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

What have you been playing recently? Do you agree with the anonymous review that Chief read during this episode? What would you take with you to the Thunder Plains?

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in this episode:

• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Steven on Penguin Random House
  • The Ultimate History of Video Games volume 1
  • The Ultimate History of Video Games volume 2
• Zoom Platform
• Jolabokaflod
• Free Guy
• Hull Immersive Visualisation Environment (HIVE)
• Our suggested titles from Zoom Platform's catalogue:
  • Squidge:
    • Cannon Fodder
    • D: The Game
    • Evil Genius
  • Jay:
    • I.G.I. 2: Covert Strike
    • Praetorians
    • Overlord
• Our conversations with Steven:
  • Part One

Steven L Kent joined us - he is someone who has not just written about the history of video games, he has lived it; meeting some of the biggest names in the industry. Steven was gracious enough to share some of his time with us. We discussed his books (The Ultimate History of Video Games volumes 1 & 2), he has a shout out to Andrew "@oddment84" Dickinson, and puts his foot in his mouth

Remember that you can always get in touch with us on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or with our Contact page. Don't forget to check the chapters tab in your podcatcher. This is a thing we're doing now, so keep an eye open for those.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

This is part two - of four - of a conversation with author and video game historian Steven L Kent, and is a collaboration between ourselves and Zoom Platform. Whilst this is an audio episode, it was originally recorded as a pair of video interviews. What we've done is cut the two video interviews into four parts and will be releasing them as audio episodes. But if you'd rather watch the first two parts as a video you'll find it here.

Part Two of Four

As a reminder, Steven describes his books as

My books are called "The Ultimate History of Video Games".
Volume 1 starts out with Abraham Lincoln and Bagatelle, and goes all the way to 2000 and sort of the collapse of the Dreamcast - or it's about to collapse, you can tell that it's faltering - PlayStation 2 has been announced and is just coming out, and Xbox has been announced.
Book two has some overlap, because there will be some people who read volume 2 without reading volume 1, so it's got a bunch of overlap. But what's interesting is that I thought I'd be able to go from 2000 to the present, but I only got to 2012. So volume three should come out around 2026.
- Steven L Kent

299

No discussion on video game history would be complete without a discussion on "the price heard" around the world. Which you can find here.

And for those who don't know, there is a very long story behind the crowd reaction here. Essentially, the story is that Sega had just announced their Saturn (only a few hours earlier), which was a surprise to most of the retailers who were in attendance (because Sega hadn't told them that it was being announced). Sega also announced it with a $399 price tag.

As such, Sony's entire announcement of the PlayStation was simply

299
- Steve Race, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment

---

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Narrator
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"Mr. Zeus, I'm a big fan. I knew you were, I knew you were real," And Ray Ray's just like bowing in front of this swan

Narrator
As they fumble their way through protecting their skeptical town from mysterious evils.

We release new episodes every other Monday on the pod catcher of your choice. I hope to see you soon in sunny Gullacochica.

Find out more at linktr.we/ShrimpandCrits or check the show notes for a link.

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Gunpei Yokoi

Gunpei Yokoi really was an amazing engineer. He started Nintendo's "responsible engineering" philosophy - the idea that they will use technology that is widely available now in order to innovate in non-traditional ways. And this is something that Nintendo has continued to do to this day. He was the designer of the Game&Watch, GameBoy, the "cross pad" controller, and the Metroid series.

Steven shared a wonderful story about Gunpei in this episode:

So I was at a CES - I was fairly new in the industry - and Virtual Boy had not come out yet. I was covering [Virtual Boy] for Electronic Games.
I went to Nintendo and I said, "I wanna meet all these people," in truth I clipped their names out of "Game Over" by David Sheff. I didn't know this people. Nobody did, really. If it weren't for Sheff, we might still not know them... [Nintendo] gave me some Miyamoto time.
But Gunpei Yokoi gave me an hour, two days in a row. And after that, if we were ever at a show and we would see each other, we'd go have a drink together. We couldn't talk very much, because my Japanese is non-existant, and I'm not sure where his English was, but it wasn't strong. But there was a bond, there was a real friendship.
I remember the last time I got to see him was at the unveiling of the N64 at Space World... and everyone ran to this one corner and looked at the N64, and near the exit as you left, there was a little ring of Virtual Boys and Gunpei was there with his translator. And as I was leaving to write my article about the N64, there's Gunpei and he's like, "Can you come take a look at things?" And he was my friend, so I went and looked at things, and it wasn't wonderful. And nobody else was there, so we sat and talked, and his translator translated for me.
And that was the last time that I got to see him. And he was a wonderful gentleman: he was nice, he was smart, and he had a self-deprecating sense of humour. I think he already knew that he was leaving Nintendo at that point.
- Steven L Kent

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

What have you been playing recently? Do you agree with the anonymous review that Chief read during this episode? What would you take with you to the Thunder Plains?

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

Links

Here are some links to some of the things we discussed in th...

Steven L Kent joined us - he is someone who has not just written about the history of video games, he has lived it; meeting some of the biggest names in the industry. Steven was gracious enough to share some of his time with us. We discussed his books (The Ultimate History of Video Games volumes 1 & 2), his favourite games ever, and the best consoles of the 90s.