Video Game History Hour

Game designer and creator of Karateka Jordan Mechner, joined by Chris Kohler of Digital Eclipse, shares a new interactive documentary The Making of Karateka exploring this 1984 karate classic title. In this episode: Jordan’s earliest work, perfect paper preservationist, Prince of Persia source code, hitting it rich in video games vs. going to class, celebrating old games, an inspiration train, a father’s love of his son, the lost leopard: found, and bringing a game back to life.

See more from Jordan Mechner:

Website: jordanmechner.com 

Facebook: /jmechner

Twitter: @jmechner

Instagram: @jmechner

Mastodon: @jmechner

YouTube: /JordanMechner 

See more from Chris Kohler:

Twitter: @kobunheat

Website: www.chriskohler.biz

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

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Documentarian Danny O’Dwyer of Noclip has been sifting through thousands of videotapes in a recent mass-acquisition of video game (and adjacent) recordings. In this episode: Burger King and Kellogg’s games, Danny can fix your VCR, conferences in 1080p, shop talk on uploading footage, BBC Domesday Project methodology, slow Sonic, is that Frank?, it’s lonely work, and (not) preserving live service games.

Project: youtube.com/@NoclipArchive

See more from Danny O’Dwyer:

Twitter: @dannyodwyer

YouTube: /noclipvideo

Patreon: /noclip

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Historian Racheil Weil returns to the show to discuss the Nintendo Knitting Machine, a never released knitting machine toy powered by the NES. In this episode: Sega Master System smack talk; flier breakdown; just…why?; dissociating like a TV doctor; analyzing the evidence: what’s real, how it might work, peripheral material, screen capture; and bless the Wayback Machine.

Flier from Howard Phillips: 

Facebook post

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See more from Rachel Weil:

Twitter: @FemicomMuseum

Website: femicom.org

Personal Twitter: @partytimeHXLNT

Personal Website: nobadmemories.com

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

VGHF librarian Phil Salvador chats with longtime contributor to video game archaeology Misty De Méo, author of CD-ROM Journal: a blog exploring multimedia games and software. We discuss her recent article A Chronology of First CD-ROM Games answering the question: What was the first CD-ROM game? In this episode: the first adventure, the magical dinosaur tour, trivia vs. genuine artistic relevance, getting into game history research, and to ROM or not to ROM.

See more from Misty De Méo:

Website: cdrom.ca

Mastodon: digipres.club/@misty

Twitter: @mistydemeo

Screenshot Blog: https://cohost.org/compactdiscinteractive 

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Travis Brown, our very own director of technology, gets technical as we talk about his role with VGHF and how he got started in preservation. In this episode: The Varsity vs The Vortex, scanning 14k pieces of optical media, scaling with Nimbies, Power-Up Baseball restoration and MAME, writing our API glue, and Frank forgets just how many projects Travis has been a part of over the years.

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

We share the details of our recent field trip to The Strong Museum of Play to celebrate their newest video game focused expansion. In this travel log episode: travel woes; Wegmans toilet paper; Transformers’ shrieks at a cocktail event; a giant, playable Donkey Kong cabinet; video games ARE real; Level Up and High Score; touring the labs, vaults, and library; and finally what inspired us.

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Brandon Butler, Director of Information Policy at the University of Virginia Library and Law and Policy Advisor at the Software Preservation Network, joins us to talk about a major new study published jointly by the Video Game History Foundation and the SPN which shows 87% of classic games released in the United States are now out of print. In this episode we find out how these games have become critically endangered and why it matters.

Blog post: https://gamehistory.org/87percent/ 

The Study: https://zenodo.org/record/8161056

The Study explained: https://gamehistory.org/study-explainer/ 

See more from Brandon Butler:

Website: softwarepreservationnetwork.org 

Law Firm: usefairuse.com

Twitter: @bc_butler

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Author and historian Kevin Bunch returns to the familiar guest chair to educate us all on a somewhat obscure 1970’s consolputer from his recent video, The History of the Bally (and Astrocade) Professional Arcade: Archive Annex Episode 4. In this episode, tears are shed, wrapping these things in useless metal, accidental historical revisionism, what’s in a name?, the toy industry was too small for undercutting, Dog Patch: shotgun volleyball, ironic corporate rewards for good behavior, and making friends over this hardware.

See more from Kevin Bunch:

Twitter: @ubersaurus

YouTube: /atariarchive

Website: atariarchive.org

Patreon: /atariarchive

Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@yuberus

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/ ubersaurus

Book: Atari Archive Vol. 1 https://limitedrungames.com/collections/atari-archive-vol-1

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Frank gets a bit reflective and shares how he got where he is today; not just the video game stuff, but the life stuff, too. In this episode: a youth in Las Vegas, underage drinking and overage smoking, dropping out of school, the Wild West of game cataloging, Frank can do it better, how to get sh*t done, thanking your inspiring figures, being a kinder person, dreaming big(ger), trying to find boredom, looking toward Jerry Beck, comics historians are just killing it, and learning from your spouse.

See more from Frank Cifaldi:

Twitter: @frankcifaldi

Email: [email protected] 

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg

Historian and game developer Andy Cunningham shares his fantastic new book The World of Nintendo Book, Volume One: A World of Wonders, a visual history of Nintendo merchandising. This first in a series goes deep into the creation of Nintendo of America's merchandising team of the late 80's and early 90's, something often overlooked in videogame history. In this episode: merchandising: the boring and the enticing, the logistics of collecting retail displays, creating a store within a store, the original Director of Merchandising, selling a promise, Nintendo’s retail force of ‘87, and what made Nintendo staff better?

See more from Andy Cunningham:

Website: worldofnintendobook.com

Twitter: @TheWONBook

Instagram: @worldofnintendobook

Facebook: /andycunninghamauthor

Video Game History Foundation:

Podcast Twitter: @gamehistoryhour

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @GameHistoryOrg

Website: gamehistory.org

Support us on Patreon: /gamehistoryorg