Episode 455: It’s Been a Fun Ten Years

Back in 2007, Derrick and Jennifer Schommer, along with Don Dunn started the Gaming Podcast, with their unique sense of humor and take on the biz of video games (as well as starting a popular World of Warcraft guild.) The trio would move on, with Derrick starting his Everyday Drinkers podcast and Common Man Cocktails site. Jonah Falcon took over, and merged it with the Videogame Roundtable. In that time, we’ve had hosts including Jordan Lund, Paul S. Nowak, Dan Quick, Scott Dirk and most lately, the inestimable T.J. Denzer. We’ve also had guest hosts including Hilary Goldstein and the late Andrew Yoon.

This episode celebrates the past 10 years, including an intro by Dan Quick and Paul S. Nowak joining this week’s episode, to discuss this news:

  • ‘Father of Pac-Man‘ Masaya Nakamura dies at 91
  • Nintendo is gearing up for more mobile games, plans 2-3 per year
  • $500 million awarded to ZeniMax in lawsuit over the Oculus Rift
  • Asheron’s Call comes to a quiet end after 17 years

Let us know how long you’ve followed the podcast for!

0 thoughts on “Episode 455: It’s Been a Fun Ten Years”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Retro FlashBack: DragonFire (Atari 2600)Retro FlashBack: DragonFire (Atari 2600)

Now here is another interesting video game for the Atari 2600, the game Dragon Fire consisted of two game screens, one which you ran across a bridge while fireballs were shot at you, you had to duck or jump over the fireball. This screen was a side-scroller style screen (although it doesn’t actually scroll), at the other end of the bridge was a castle door which you’d enter to get to the next screen.

The second screen was more classic “overhead but not really” screen where you ran around this black screen picking up treasures while a dragon at the bottom shot fire at you from below.

As the game increased in level jumping fireballs became more challenging (on the first screen) as you ran because they would come quicker, more often. The second screen would get very difficult very quickly as the dragon would increase in speed and fireball spitting. You could tell how hard the dragon would be as it would change colors from lighter to darker black as you progress stages.

When you finished collecting all the treasure an exit would pop up in the corner and you had to run to it without being burned by the fireballs, that dragon would turn from left to right nearly instantly too! Then, you’d jump into the exit and be back on the bridge again, but this time it was harder. You could die up to 7 times before the game was over (just to show you how hard it is, they gave you a bunch of lives).

The game was tough, frustrating, hard to replay because you were just so nervous and jittery from the last attempt. Graphics were “okay,” nothing to rave at but it was, after all, the 2600.

You can hear all we had to say about DragonFire for the Atari 2600 on Episode 79 of the TD Gaming Podcast!

Nintendo’s Wii Storage IssuesNintendo’s Wii Storage Issues

Nintendo’s WiiWare channel is reported to be doing well (says Nintendo) and their Virtual Console games continue to invoke nostalgic downloads. Now, as Networked based gaming slowly starts to crawl on the console Nintendo has begun to realize they’re going to hit some storage issues.

The 512MB of internal flash memory is a bit lacking, especially considering you can purchase a 2GB flash drive for under USD $50.00 in todays market. While Sony and Microsoft work to increment their disk capacities in 20GB intervals Nintendo’s still trying to figure out how to solve their internal storage issues.

Although we initially heard that geeks would be the ones to hit the storage limitations Nintendo’s North American President and COO is readily admitting the pending issue, “we have a consumer base who loves virtual console. We have a userbase who really is enjoying WiiWare content. So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on a download basis?”

The challenge in being a Japanese based company is understanding how American users consume your product. We’re much more likely to download content and spend money on products we’ve purchased 20 years ago. This is why we’ve got an American based Nintendo HQ to understand the ways of American thinking and trending.

While Nintendo Europe’s Europe’s Laurent Fischer sees only “geeks and otaku” utilizing the minimal disk capcity we here in the States can consume this space overnight. Imagine if we had downloadable content for Rock Band or Guitar Hero to pull down and play!?

As this becomes, as Reggie put it, a “mainstream problem” Nintendo is going to find their harder core demographic moving to other consoles that do it right and allow for expandability. There is a reason, after all, the other consoles cost a bit more to buy.

(Thanks, IGN)