At long last, the annual Origins episode of The Vintage Gamer. As this is the third year, this officially makes it a cherished tradition. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there was no podcasters panel so instead I went around and did some interviews at some of the small press booths. A big “Thank You” to all who participated — if what you hear interests you, please support them with your dollars.

For a fuller picture of the show, I recommend you check out The Spiel Origins episode for a lot more show floor interviews, and the Dice Tower Origins episode for more info and a nice interview with (Spiel des Jahres winner!) Reiner Knizia.

Featured interviews:

Pictures of my trip to Origins including most of these folks can be found on my flickr feed. You can also see the lovely new sewer line.

Oh my stars and garters, it’s another Vintage Gamer! This time I cover the 80s conspiracy game, Illuminati. Lie to your friends, stab them in the back, all to take over the world (sounds like Diplomacy — or a bizarre version of Lifeboats). All this, plus some Vintage Gamer news and feedback!

I’m at Balticon and have to run to a panel… show notes tomorrow.

And so The Vintage Gamer returns to its regular yet irregular schedule. In this show I spend over an hour talking about one of my secret loves: chess variants. I talk about games of the past, games from other countries, and some other unusual variants. (and this barely scratches the surface). In addition, our new sponsor Bob stops by for a visit. All this, plus unrequested editorial commentary from a groundskeeper and a curious dog.

Additional Links:

Final thoughts:

With all of these games, I know I screwed something up somewhere, so feel free to correct me.

The Vintage Gamer begins its triumphant return with a special interview episode with the Tic-Tac-Toe Champion of the World. If that’s not enough, we have a new sponsor! And the usual intro and outro music. So yes, it’s a chock-full episode.

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Final thoughts:

Real show in 2 weeks. Promise and for true.

Back from the abyss with an actual game review show. This time I talk about the darkly humorous game Nuclear War, designed by Doug Malewicki and published by Flying Buffalo, Inc. I also cover what’s been happening with me over the past few months, discuss some recent gaming news (vintage and otherwise), and talk about possibilities for future shows.

Links:

Final thoughts:

Yeah, yeah, Dune is not an Eon game, but it might as well be.

It being the second year in a row, I now present the traditional recording of the gaming podcasters panel. The panel this year was organized by Scott Nicholson, and featured board game podcasters. Sorry about the delay on this — I used two recorders to get full coverage of the panel so there was some post-production involved.

Scott Nicholson (Board Games with Scott and On Board Games)

Plus special guests:

Don Dehm (Pulp Gamer)

oh, and

Many thanks to Scott Nicholson for organizing this — it was a great panel of people.

After an even longer hiatus, I’m back — at least for the moment. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with another gaming luminary, Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies. We talked for forty-five minutes about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, boardgames and briefly about his later work in online and mobile games.

Links:

Final thoughts:

Another big thank you to Eric Goldberg for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me.

After a long hiatus, I’m back. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with gaming luminary Greg Costikyan of Manifesto Games. We talked for half an hour about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, and his later work in online and independent digital games.

Links:

Final thoughts:

A big thank you to Greg Costikyan for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me.

Back to board games with this episode, where I do double-coverage by talking about both another paragraph-based game and another Eric Goldberg game. The game is Tales of the Arabian Nights, originally published by West End Games in 1985 and republished and revised by Edition Erlkonig in 1999. In this one, you and the other players take on roles from the Tales of Scheherazade and have adventures around Baghdad and the surrounding barbarian lands, only to return home with great stories, to meet your destiny, or even to become Sultan.

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Final thoughts:

I’ve switched to using Garageband to do my sound recording and editing simply because Audacity isn’t terribly stable on the Mac. I think it sounds pretty good, but let me know if you notice any quirks — I’m still getting used to it.

As it’s been a while since I’ve done a pure computer game, I decided to do another blast from the Macintosh past. This time the game is The Fool’s Errand, designed and created by Cliff Johnson, and originally published by Miles Computing. It’s a puzzle game that should hopefully appeal to you pencil puzzlers out there. I also talk about the follow-up games At the Carnival and 3 in Three, as well as the sequel, The Fool and His Money.

I also give the final winners of the Politika games, and talk about some recent appearances on other shows.

Links:

Final thoughts:

As I was focusing primarily on the computer games, I inadvertantly forgot a few elements of Cliff Johnson’s recent career. After the Philips games wrapped up, he was a consultant to Disney Online, and designed the $100,000 puzzle for David Blaine’s book The Mysterious Stranger.