Video Game History Hour

Historian and documentarian Kate Willaert returns to the show, this time to discuss her recent article on “adult” games made under the Mystique banner for the Atari 2600: Porno Hustlers Of The Atari Age. Kate guides us through the very troubled history around these titles’ creation and release, including protests, legal suits, and attempted legislation. She also unravels the complicated company structures behind these games to figure out who was really involved in this story.

See more from Kate Willaert:

Twitter: @katewillaert

YouTube: /a critical hit

Website: acriticalhit.com

Patreon: /acriticalhit

Newsletter: criticalkate.substack.com

John Rairdin of Nintendo World Report joins us to discuss his ambitious documentary The History and Development of Star Fox Command (Ft. The Original Developers). He shares the previously undocumented history of this Nintendo DS title, its developers from Q-Games, and its many creators. As a side note: John has some pretty good ideas on how to make a game about space rodents, who may or may not have robotic legs, flying around saving the universe into a pretty fun racing game. Let’s get on this, Nintendo!

See more from John Rairdin:

Twitter: @jtsknight92

Website: NintendoWorldReport.com

YouTube: /NinWRTV

Patreon: /NWR

We’re joined, once again, by Norman Caruso to discuss the history of a unique 1990 Nintendo Entertainment System controller, the U-Force. All the rage when it was announced, this hands-free controller uses infrared emitters/detectors to locate your hands in 3-dimensional space for game control input. In his recent video Don't Touch: The Story of the U-Force | Gaming Historian we learn how this device came about and why, sadly, it didn’t perform very well, both physically and in the retail market.

Find more content from Norman Caruso:

YouTube: /gaminghistorian

Twitter: @gaminghistorian

Patreon: /gaminghistorian

To celebrate the Video Game History Hour’s 50th episode we’ve invited friend of the show, Chris Kohler, to join a thoughtful conversation all about game prototypes. What are they, where do they come from, and what part did they play in forming the Video Game History Foundation? How does the existence of source code affect our feelings about prototypes? We share stories of cool prototypes we’ve come across in our past and what prototypes we’d loved to find someday.

Mentioned in the show:

https://hiddenpalace.org/Project_Deluge

See more from Chris Kohler:

Twitter: @kobunheat

Website: www.chriskohler.biz

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Kohler/e/B001IOFJPI%3F

Jimmy Maher, creator of The Digital Antiquarian, returns to the show to discuss his article on The Dig, a LucasArts point and click adventure. Jimmy takes us through the rich, but troubled, history of this title in a way that helps us understand how this project ever made it to the finish line and why it wasn’t more popular. Grab your shovel and get ready to solve some alien space puzzles!

See more from Jimmy Maher:

The Digital Antiquarian: filfre.net

Patreon: /DigitalAntiquarian

Twitter: @DigiAntiquarian

The Analog Antiquarian: https://analog-antiquarian.net/

Tomorrow marks the 22 year anniversary of the Dreamcast’s North American launch back on 9/9/99. To celebrate, we’re joined by Chase, one of the PR professionals charged with creating its memorable launch for Sega and who worked on the release of every single first party game for the console. We get a different perspective on this moment in history and hear stories of the memorable and wacky stunts Chase helped to put together to create media buzz. You can see some of his saved memorabilia and swag from these events in his Twitch stream, Highlight: Dreamcast Anniversary Stream.

See more from Chase:

Twitter: @chasejustchase

Twitch: /chase

The Video Game History Hour music is Blippy Trance by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In our final week of our three week hiatus, we’re going back to a conversation we had with David L. Craddock back in episode 33. We covered the Resident Evil demo that had come out and other upcoming games, how our gaming styles have changed as we’ve gotten older, and what styles of game reviews we find useful. We hope you enjoy!

See more from David L. Craddock:

Website: shacknews.com

Twitter: @davidlcraddock

Book: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/monsters-in-the-dark-the-making-of-x-com#/

Website: davidlcraddock.com

The Video Game History Hour music is Blippy Trance by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We’re continuing our brief hiatus, but this week we’re sharing a little after-show chat we had with Alex Smith talking further about the Smithsonian’s oral history project: Video Game Pioneers Archive.

See more from Alex Smith:

Blog: videogamehistorian.wordpress.com

Video Game Pioneers Archive: https://invention.si.edu/node/20723/p/489-videogame-pioneers-archive

Project Transcripts: https://sova.si.edu/details/NMAH.AC.1498?s=0&n=10&t=C&q=&i=0

Book: https://www.routledge.com/They-Create-Worlds-The-Story-of-the-People-and-Companies-That-Shaped-the/Smith/p/book/9781138389908

Podcast: podcast.theycreateworlds.com

The Video Game History Hour music is Blippy Trance by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The podcast is going to take a brief hiatus for a few weeks in order to better focus on projects at the foundation. But, don't worry; we're not leaving you with nothing! Back in episode 30 we hung out with Ben Hanson after the show and discussed the process of being an interviewer and the challenges that includes. We hope you enjoy this more into-the-weeds convo and look forward to coming back very soon.

See more from Ben Hanson:

Twitter: @yozetty

Website: www.Minnmax.com

YouTube: /minnmax

Patreon: /minnmax

Podcast: The MinnMax Show

The Video Game History Hour music is Blippy Trance by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Greetings and welcome to some quality time with Clint Basinger of Lazy Game Reviews, his YouTube channel dedicated to computer history and software. We originally were inspired to bring Clint on the show to discuss his recent video, Unreal Tournament 22 Years Later: An LGR Retrospective, but we just couldn’t help but expand to the broader topic of 1990’s computer tech, his expertise. From Morrowind to Need for Speed, from Windows ‘95 to Direct3D, Clint joins us to share his passion and we couldn’t be more excited.

See more from Clint Basinger:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Lazygamereviews

The Video Game History Hour music is Blippy Trance by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/