Passion for Pixels Retro Gaming Podcast

Remember dodging those laser beams on the Quickman level of Mega Man 2, working up a sweat trying to beat the underwater level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, running around in your underwear in Ghosts 'n Goblins, playing Battletoads in two player mode or pretty much any level of Ninja Gaiden?

Classic games often have a high difficulty level because they were built to mimic arcade games, which needed players to lose lives frequently enough to make them keep shovelling quarters into the machine. This caused many a Nintendo NES and Sega Master System controller to go flying across the living room back in the day.

We talk about our memories of incredibly difficult retro gaming moments, and how gaming has become a lot more accesible and less frustrating in modern times, but that part of the challenge has been lost in the process.

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We list our top three favourite games of all time. The only game to end up on two lists is Tetris - listen to find out which other classics made the cut! Also, Tyma is back (but he forgets to introduce himself).

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We talk about our favourite classic retro multiplayer games, from great hockey games like Blades of Steel, Ice Hockey and NHL 95 to Street Fighter II, Goldeneye for Nintendo 64 and of course the Nintendo NES Four Score four player favourites RC Pro Am II and Nintendo World Cup, plus lots more!

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We're taking some time off for Christmas, so this week we're rebroadcasting an old fan favourite, our episode on Japanese game director, producer, writer and designer Hideo Kojima. We talk about the games that inspired Kojima to become a game developer, his earliest work (ever heard of Penguin Adventure or Policenauts?) and how his most well known series of games, Metal Gear featuring Solid Snake, came about. Once again it's a story of how the limitations of the console's hardware forced the developers to think outside of the box, when the game was developed for the MSX2 and later the Nintendo NES.

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Japanese Role Playing Games (Japanese RPGs or JRPGs for short) used to be one of our favourite genres, but playing a JRPG today is like meeting that friend from 20 years ago who still lives at home with his parents.

We try to figure out what made JRPGs especially appealing to us as teenagers, talk about what sets them apart from other RPGs, how crude graphics was a benefit for Tetsuya Nomura's Final Fantasy designs and how we still enjoy the beautiful soundtracks by Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda for games like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and Xenogears.

We also look at how stuff gets lost in translation, both because of limitations in the ROM file, like the case was with Ted Woolsey's infamous Secret of Mana translation, but also in a more cultural way. Like what the hell is going on at the Honeybee Inn?

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The holiday season is upon us and spearheading the charge of AAA titles vying for your gift-giving money is Star Wars: Battlefront. While reviews are suggesting that Battlefront may be a bit weak in the force, the Star Wars franchise has done pretty well over the years and has spawned some most impressive classics, like Star Wars for the NES, Super Star Wars for the SNES and Tie Fighter and Knights of the Old Republic for the PC. On this episode, Stian and Danny delve into the treasure trove of Star Wars games and pick their favourites. Did Yoda Stories make the list? No. No it did not.

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From Mario to Mirror's Edge, platformers are one of gaming's oldest genres. Why have platformers enjoyed such longevity and what does the future hold for them? How did the prevalence of 3D graphics affect the genre? Mario 3 or Super Mario World?

Stian and Danny try to answer all of these questions and more on the an episode dedicated entirely to the Def Leppard of gaming... what?!?

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There are more superhero movies coming out than you can shake a stick at these days, but if you wanted to see superheroes on your TV screen back in the day, you had to pop in a videogame.

Superheroes are overpowered, so how do you make a game that is both challenging and fun to play, while keeping it true to the source material? Superman games are notoriously bad, and this is because nothing hurts Superman, and that makes for a bad game. So what is it that makes some superhero games work, while others don't?

We delve into this topic by looking at the classic Ninja Turtles games of the late 1980's and early 1990's, Batman for the NES and more modern Batman games, we look at how the aestethics of 8- and 16-bit games are closer to the still images of a comic book than modern games are, and we look at how Silver Surfer on the NES got it all wrong.

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Casual games have become huge the last few years, with Candy Crush Saga netting more than a billion daily plays in 2015, but casual games is not an invention of the mobile phone age. We look at casual gaming through our retro tinted lenses, and start with 1980's Pacman.

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We talk about our vivid memories of buying games back in the day when brick and mortar stores were the only option, and games didn't have a release date, so you'd have to come back again and again to see if a game was out yet.

Tyma reveals why purchasing a japanese copy of Final Fantasy VIII was a bad idea, Danny tells of how he got ripped off purchasing his first ever game, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for the Sega Genesis, and Stian is crowned winner of first time videogame purchases, when he tells of his bundle of sweet classics purchased second hand 25 years ago.

ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES!

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Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion!

Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at [email protected].