Matt’s been a bit of a rascal this week. He’s been staying up late, and consuming spiritual opium. Tisk tisk, Matt. Tisk tisk. While our podcast kicks off on a bit of an aside on Video Games in China, the meaty center of this week’s audiophile unfriendly episode of The Vagabond Gamecast zones in on the Sega Genesis classic: Castlevania: Bloodlines (aka バンパイアキラー for those of you who may be dripping with curiosity over what they called this title in Japan). Having both just completed our very first playthroughs of the game this week, we do a bit of a[...]

Steve and Matt are the type of blokes who really enjoy doing some creative endeavors on the side. Unfortunately, all this moving around and dealing with adult stuff, like keeping their children alive and remaining gainfully employed, tends to put a squeeze on free time and shake up the routine.   After some cheerful discussion about recent gaming activity and what motivates us to play games (or do anything really) we dig into the challenges we’ve faced with trying to make time for side projects and hobbies.   For anyone not in the know, Steve and Matt actually started[...]

OK, hear me out here… I get that the ongoing title of this series has been “Sorted By Console”… but let’s face it… computers are pretty great too. In last week’s episode we waxed poetic about what it was like in the latter part of the millennium once we had access to the internet… but you know… even before the internet, computers were pretty great. And so in today’s episode, we’re going to visit the joys of that period in computational recreation – the period where we grew accustomed to DOS and mice that would inevitably clog up with hair.  Some[...]

Cranky and speeding towards the big 4-0 as we step along through the 2020s, I think most people our age that were hardcore geeks in their teens really miss those early days of the internet in some way or another. If they don’t, they missed out! Something about them were just different. Like, different in a way that’s undeniably inferior, but with a simple charm. Communities were more scattered and smaller, the world was a more anonymous place, and the marvel of this insane new technology entered our lives at the perfect budding curious age. The early internet was a[...]

Man, those Nintendo 64 controllers were just the worst. Is there actually a following for those? Are there people out there that don’t think so? What percentage of them would you say haven’t actually broken and are still even usable, dear listeners? And what was with the wonky Dreamcast controller and its oddball shape and cord that connected from the bottom? We could also spend an eternity talking about all the quirky oddball third party controllers out there. So what are the best controllers? Is there an ultimate controller that will suit everyone for all needs? (Spoiler: not a chance)[...]

Hello, our beloved listeners! It’s great getting the old podcasts up onto YouTube! One thing that we’ve always noticed, is that humans talk too slow. Whenever we listen to content, we tend to listen at 1.5x speed, so it’s nice from our perspective being able to easily do that. (You’ve always been able to on our website, but it’s not really a feature in iTunes.) We’ve even been experimenting with speeding our content up by about 8% this season to help keep the pace a little better without speeding it up to the point where it would be difficult for[...]

Back in May 2021, one Jason Schreier released unto the world his words in the form of a book called “Press Reset” which sought to tell the behind-the-scenes story of several games from the 2010’s.  Matt and Steve, having both read Jason’s prior book “Blood, Sweat, and Pixels“, were keen to dig into this new book. As luck would have it, it came up on both of their radars at the same time… so come join them in this week’s Vagabond Gamecast as the two discuss their thoughts after having read the first three chapters.  Some side topics you may[...]

Matt and Steve have come to the disappointing realization that they are mere game enthusiasts in a world where collectors now have millions of dollars at their disposal. In this episode, we take a brief moment to bask in the glory of the musical choice for this year’s Olympic games. Never thought we’d live to see the day where Yasunori Mitsuda’s genius was appreciated by all the sports watchers around the world, but I’m not going to complain now that we’re finally in a good timeline! If Steve’s predictions are correct, Frog’s Theme will do more for Olympians than Tinder[...]

Hey everyone, are you all down on your “Canada knowledge”? Try to follow along because this time around, our friendly duo reaches back into the past to discuss our humble small-town Canadian origins and how we’ve moved on from them. We take a bit of a less-game focused approach this time to re-visit what it is like being oft-travelling (and oft-not) nerdy gaming dads in this crazy world. Both hailing from the relatively sparsely populated east coast of Canada, we touch on the adjustments and attitude changes we’ve experienced living in a variety of different places, and focus particularly on[...]

What’re these nerdy dudes up to this week? Well, we’re stepping away from talking gameplay and software stuff this week to focus on gaming hardware this time around. Do you upgrade your systems to the “Pro” version? Is it worth it? Do you hold out, knowing that a pro version is inevitable? Is it good for consumers or just a nuisance for those of us that end up owning inferior versions of hardware, effectively being penalized for being early adopters? The recent announcement of an OLED Switch (that is otherwise unchanged from the existing model) got us thinking console hardware[...]