Gaming History Club

GTA VI might just be the biggest entertainment media launch ever. But before becoming one of the best selling gaming franchises of all time, Grand Theft Auto was just a tech demo of an isometric game engine made in Scotland.

Sources:

Race'n'Chase Game Design Document

The Complete History of DMA Design by Mike Dailly

Mike Dailly copyright strikes by Rockstar

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It's been forty years since The Legend of Zelda arrived on the Famicom Disk System, and with the Ocarina of Time remake landing on Switch 2 in November, we're going back to where it started. Miyamoto's childhood caves, the dungeon crawler that grew an overworld, Koji Kondo rewriting the title theme overnight because of a copyright problem, and the phone line Nintendo had to staff because nobody could work out where to go. Plus a small, polite disagreement with the Guinness Book of World Records. Join us, Player One — it's dangerous to go alone.

Sources:

Was The Legend Of Zelda Actually Named After Its Heroine?

Super Cassette Vision / Save Cartridges

Zelda Williams talks about her love for Nintendo

An Intriguing Tale of How The Legend of Zelda's Iconic Opening Song Almost Never Happened

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1977 is the first time that a normal person might afford a pre-assembled computer that comes with a monitor and keyboard. Find out how, and why!

Source:

Video Game Console Library - Atari

John Carmack tried to steal Apple 2 Computers

The Computer trinity

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Everyone calls the Tamagotchi the first virtual pet. It wasn't. It wasn't the most advanced, either — and the one that beat it to market by twelve days had actual neural networks. So how did a plastic egg with three buttons and twenty pixels flatten all of them, sell over 100 million units, and make Shigeru Miyamoto think Mario 64 had lost? Ahead of its 30th anniversary this November, we find out what the Tamagotchi was actually first at.

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Sources:

Official Tamagotchi Website History

IG Nobel Prize Winners

Museum of Play - Tamagotchi

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This episode we take a partial traditional approach, covering the history of Pokémon and the minds behind the biggest media franchise of all time. But Pokémon's too huge a topic to stay tidy, so we also go on a side quest into the weirder stuff — like a million strangers controlling one Game Boy on Twitch, and Pokémon GO's surprising ties to military surveillance.

Sources:

History of Pokemon - Bulbapedia

A Brief History of Pokemon Being Left Out of Games - Video Game Story Time

Speedrun World Records Pokemon Red/Blue

The Complete History of Twitch Plays Pokemon - Schwam Games

70 YEARS OLD GRANDPA USES 45 PHONES TO PLAY POKEMON GO - POKÉMON GO

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SEGA made awesome consoles, and they were the only manufacturer that gave Nintendo any competition at all. In this episode we discuss SEGA's consoles, the Game Gear, and their departure from console manufacturing.

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Sources:

Interview with Hideki Sato

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SEGA went from distributing slot machines to military bases, to becoming a household name in gaming and creating one of the most iconic characters of all time. How did this happen? Well, listen and find out!

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Sources:

Sega Retro

The Four Americans that built SEGA - Kotaku

The Next Generation issue Dec 1996 - Interview with David Rosen

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Playing in a shared word online with thousands of other people is wondrous. You'll be surprised to find out that somehow people having been playing MMORPGs before the internet, and before computer graphics!

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Sources:

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The biggest horror franchise in the world began with a movie tie-in game for the Famicom that really should have been released in the western world, but didn't.

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Sources:

1UP Interview with Shinji Mikami

Kotaku - The NES Game that inspired Resident Evil

Gameinformer - Place of Residing Evil

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8 years before PONG, Mabel Addis was writing and designing games. As the first video game writer, and first female game designer, she helped invent the strategy and edutainment genres with The Sumerian Game. This episode tells the story of a gaming history hero often overlooked.

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Sources:

NY Times Article

Game Developers Conference Awards 2023

A Critical Hit! - The Most Important Video Game You've Never Heard Of

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