Episode 333: Boss Battles

Paul returns to the Gaming Podcast, having doing the major work on the Facebook game he’d been helping develop, Team USA Pinsanity. The trio argue over boss battles, and this week’s Gaming Flashback is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Jordan also finally has a great Vita game to fawn over, Tearaway.

  • Take-Two files ‘Bully Bullsworth Academy’ trademark in Europe
  • Twitch cracks down on PS4 Playroom inappropriate content
  • Blizzard dev apologizes for remarks on sexualized designs
  • Sony to make $250M entertainment cuts, “nothing too sacred”

The Question of the Week: “What is your opinion on boss battles?”

0 thoughts on “Episode 333: Boss Battles”

  1. Welcome back Paul, I didn’t know if it was for certain since Jonah said *might* be. I’ve been listening to since DanQ joined months ago.

    I like how you get on my case about not being able to pick a favorite soundtrack and then go on to say how hard it is to do just that.

    I feel that Link to the Past is still my favorite Zelda game in the series. I didn’t realize it was so heavily edited for American audiences but I am not surprised it was since it is a big practice to modify games and shows from Japan.
    @Bully: Why would anyone want to play a game where they actually go to school? Didn’t we all do enough of that?

    QOTW: Now, Jonah, what do you mean Boss battles are generally bad? That’s the high light of a good game, like in the Zelda series. They even made a game solely about Boss Battles (Shadow of the Colossus).

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Myst was published by Brøderbund Software, developed by Cyan Worlds and created by two brothers that did the design and directed the game (it was, much like a movie).

The original game was released on the Macintosh (in 1993) and then later ported to Microsoft Windows and Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, 3DO, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.

Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses an enchanted book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as “Ages”. Clues found in each of these Ages help reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.” (wikipedia)

The game was a success, no doubt, and was considered the best selling PC game of all time until TheSims dethroned it. Besides mind blowing graphics, at the time, Myst helped move the game and PC industry along by selling CDROM’s. The game required a CDROM, which was rare at the time, and I recall them bundling Myst with some CDROMS or hyping it as “you need a CDROM so you can play Myst.” On more than one occasion when a person game to me asking what they should get to show off their new (costly) CDROM I would say “you need to try Myst.”

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them(wikipedia)

Franchise sales: 12-million copies (first Myst game alone in the franchise, 6-million), pretty impressive eh?

You don’t have to be a huge Myst fan to know how it changed the industry, grew the medium of CD-based games and entertained millions. A real gamers thinking game!

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