Franchise Festival

Hosts Chris, Spencer, and Hamilton got into the eggnog and decided to cover the Resident Evil: Death Island CG movie as a Christmas bonus show. It may not have been a great film, but we all had a great time talking about it! Happy holidays, friends!

Hello listeners, this is your Franchise Festival host Chris. We just wanted to provide a few quick announcements:

(1) There is no new episode on the public feed this month, as we’re taking a short break between seasons to recuperate and enjoy the holidays with our family and friends.

(2) Patrons will get our annual Game of the Year podcast on or around December 15th. If you’d like to hear it, please subscribe to at patreon.com/franchisefestival for as little as $3/month. You’ll also get access to the full back catalog of bonus shows, including some very strange Resident Evil spinoff episodes and a bunch of indie game coverage from Season 3.

(3) We’ll be shutting down our website in 2024. It’s pretty expensive to maintain, and the data indicates that most of you listen either through podcast apps or our Patreon page. Consequently, the Patreon will become our new home on the web. Public feed episodes are still posted there for free listening, so you don’t need to be a member to enjoy it.

(4) Finally, our fourth season starts on January 1, 2024. In case you missed it, our plan is to cover Capcom’s Mega Man series from start to finish over the course of eleven shows. We’ll also be releasing patron-exclusive bonus shows on remakes, spinoffs, adaptations, and spiritual successors.

We appreciate your interest in the show and look forward to joining you all again next year. We’d also like to express a very special thank you to our patrons: Cheatachu, Celeste, Ed, Loren, Quinley Thorne, Cedric the Owl, Jarathen, and Jasper - you bring joy to our hearts and inspire us to make the best content we can. Thanks for listening, everybody! Goodbye.

Hamilton, Spencer, and Chris offer their final thoughts on the topics covered in Season 3. Along the way, they recount their favorite and least favorite games in these franchises, whether there are any similarities between Supergiant and Sonic the Hedgehog, what they'd like to see in the future. Finally, Season 4's topic is announced at the end...

This episode, like all episodes in Season 3, was made possible by our patrons! Thank you to Cheatachu, Quinley Thorne, Celeste, Ed, Loren, Jasper, Cedric the Owl, and Jarathen.

Hamilton and Chris explore Sonic the Hedgehog's first "open zone" adventure, Sonic Frontiers (2022). Along the way, they discuss the game's development, its peculiar minigames, and how well it succeeds at shifting the franchise away from linear stage design.

Noteworthy sources include interviews with Sonic Team Creative Officer Takashi Iizuka by IGN and Eurogamer.

Spencer and Chris get downright crunchy with Supergiant's Hades (2020), working through the finer details of how its gameplay systems interact with one another to produce one of the best roguelikes of the last decade. Along the way, they explore how Hades was made and how the elusive good ending plays out.

Sources

MCV Interview with Jen Zee

Gamasutra Interview with Greg Kasavin

Noclip Documentary Series - "Hades: Developing Hell"

Chris and special guest Celeste Roberts go in-depth with NoCode's Stories Untold (2017). Along the way, they manage to discuss Zork (1977), Cold War-era cyanide tooth capsules, and the Alien film franchise.

For more from Celeste, please check out the Boss Rush Network, Another Zelda Podcast, and Read Only Magazine!

Also, this episode was guest-edited by Carly Pryor! You can find more of her great work on Instagram and YouTube.