Geeking with the Moms

Mika Mika, who took over the news as "Donkey Kong Dad," joins in to talk about how he learned to make games when he was a kid: programming in K-Mart on a Commodore 64! Now his kids are playing Minecraft and Super Smash Bros. We touch on how magical Minecraft is for learning to make games, and how Disney Infinity doesn't quite have the same touch.

Here's the news:

Media Molecule is demoing their new game, Dreams, at Paris Games Week. And it looks kinda weird.Quantic Dream has a new game called Detroit coming out. It stars a familiar android named Kara!Xbox gets backwards compatibility starting in November.New York Times is partnering with Google Cardboard to ship out VR headsets and make short films.Sony isn't making games for the Vita anymore, and I'm crying about it.Here's the announcement about Nintendo's mobile games! Or rather, just apps.

Nicole's friend Morla joins us to talk about voice acting. She talks about how important it is to take risks and be brave as ana actor, and why she went to voice acting from stage acting.

News from this week: 

The Apple TV goes on pre-order Monday! This one will have an App Store so you can play games, but Simone doesn't think it will shake up the living room.There was a #BTTF Level Kit released in LittleBigPlanet 3 for Back to the Future Day!Pikachu comes to Build-a-bear!Sports games dominated physical sales for September.

Nicole, Linda, and Simone are joined by Courtney to talk consoles. Between the Wii U, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, which one is the most worth buying?

As always, we go over the news. LEGO games are still coming out, Courtney is your resident Mega Yarn Yoshi Surgeon, and Destiny and Halo 5's microtransactions aren't causing us much grief. At least, not yet.

We also talk a bit about crowdfunding, as Square Enix has indicated that they might be interested in using Kickstarter to localize Japanese video games. Good news? Bad news? Listen to find out.

Make sure you send all your questions to [email protected] and we'll read them on the show!

On this episode we're joined by video game composer Braxton Burks. Braxton's first composition was reorchestrating all of Pokémon Red and Blue. He's a self-taught musician who is now attending Cornish, and composing for video games on the side. We ask him about how he got his start in music—and what is counterpoint, anyway?

There's also some news to tackle. If Destiny has mysteriously appeared on your PS4, we know why, and the answer is kind of annoying. Plus, we talk about Tomb Raider, flying around in Minecraft, and the Legend of Zelda Symphony's upcoming performance on The Tonight Show.

Lisa Jaech, Linda's daughter, joins us this week to talk about a Gamasutra article by Laralyn McWilliams. The article is about whether games could be programmed to gauge our emotional reactions, and respond in kind. That would allow us to have more meaningful emotional interactions with them, instead of carving that space out for ourselves.

A listener also writes in to ask about female Nintendo characters that we want to see in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U! He doesn't really want his daughters to be exposed to Bayonetta this young.

We also talk free games for PlayStation and Xbox this month, and what holiday releases we're looking forrward too. And Simone yells. A lot.

This week we talk to Andy Robertson of the prolific YouTube channel Family Gamer TV! You can check it out here. Specifically we talk about toys-to-life which, as Andy points out, was technically Activision's term first. This is a big month for these games, as Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and LEGO Dimensions are all coming out. We discuss the trends in toys-to-life, the costs, and the good side of toys-to-life as well.

Plus, news on the SAG-AFTRA voice actor strike, a possible Bioshock Collection for current-gen consoles, and more! It's a loaded episode. Remember to write to us at [email protected] with questions or comments!

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