Retronauts

We at Retronauts regret to inform you once again that something is very old. (Hey, we're just doing our job.) That's right: The PlayStation 2 turns 18 this month, and to celebrate its passage into adulthood we've put together two whole hours of podcasting fun about Sony's market-dominating beast of a console. Just how important was DVD support? And will any console ever outsell the PS2? On this po...

The Retronauts East survey of Namco's arcade legacy continues! Jeremy, Benj, and Chris tackle the coin-op doldrums of 1983-1985 while dreaming of more interesting days to come.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the movie that changed the face of modern cinema (for better or worse), Jeremy talks Iron Man—the character, the games, and the weird lack of games—with comics expert Chris Sims and long-time Iron Man superfan Benj Edwards. Also this episode: The end of "Micros"! Now the biweekly Friday episode will just be plain ol' "Retronauts," whatever their length. Because this...

Jeremy and Bob go international to examine the origins of the world's most influential console RPG series. First, we stop in Nagoya to talk Dragon Quest with Alex Fraioli. Then, USgamer's Nadia Oxford beams in from Canada to lament the cruelty of DQII.

The end is nigh! Sort of. Jeremy, Ben, and Benj return to look one last time at SEGA's classic arcade legacy, exploring their coin-on megabits of the late ’90s. From Virtua Fighter 3 to Crazy Taxi, it's like crib notes for the Dreamcast era...

Nadia Oxford dials in to swap listener mail submissions with Bob and Jeremy for episodes we've recorded but not yet published. Get a preview of things to come in the weeks ahead with community opinions on Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy VII, and more!

Ray Barnholt and Henry Gilbert join Bob and Jeremy to talk about the OTHER Super Mario Bros. 2—plus, we fill in the 8-bit Mario gaps we've never touched on before. Call Foreman Spike, 'cause we're the Wrecking Crew, baby.

Jeremy talks to Chasm's James Petruzzi about creating the best IGA-vania style exploratory platformer in a decade, along with the challenges of meeting modern player expectations with a game built so clearly in the classic spirit of Symphony of the Night.

Greetings, programs! Anthony Schwader of the Game & Movie podcast joins Jeremy to discuss games about a movie about games: Disney's Tron, and all its tie-in video game creations.

It's a double dose of bardy delight! First, Jason Wilson and Rowan Kaiser join Jeremy and Bob in the studio to talk about the importance of Interplay's The Bard's Tale. Then, designer Michael Cranford regales us with the saga of its creation.

A potpourri of topics this week as Ben Elgin and Benj Edwards talk Jeremy through the early days of dial-up gaming and BBS madness. Then, Shivam Bhatt and Bob help tackle a long-overdue listener mailbag.

In 1994, Sega released the Pico: a cute little purple-and-teal suitcase that ran on Genesis hardware and promised to enhance young minds rather than rot them. While it was a neat little piece of tech at the time, America didn't take as kindly to the Pico as Japan did--though Sega's little "learning computer" managed to touch a few tiny lives before it disappeared with only 20 releases to its name....

Back in 2007, Irrational Games wowed the world with BioShock, an FPS experience that bridged the gap between PC and console games with its role as the "thinking man's shooter." With 2013's Infinite closing the book on the series—and Irrational Games as a whole—and still no new Ken Levine game to speak of, there's never been a better time to revisit the recent past and a game that really kicked the...

Jeremy talks to Wizardry programmer Robert Woodhead about the history and inspirations behind his influential all-time role-playing classic.

Jeremy, Chris, and Benj take a wildly disorganized (one might say "postmodern") journey through the original adventure of Indiana Jones... and eventually remember to touch on the games based on the film, too.

We celebrate five years of rebooted Retronauts by getting the original band back together! Ray Barnholt and Dr. Sparkle return to discuss Mario Madness: The U.S. version of Super Mario Bros.

Jeremy chats with 17-Bit Studios boss Jake Kazdal about the road he traveled from working an NES-era Nintendo game counselor to collaborating on SEGA classics like Rez to running his own game development studio in Japan.

For this Retronauts Micro, we're going for a community-focused approach as we respond to YOUR comments about Bob's latest round of episodes! This week, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Matthew Jay as the crew fields responses to previous Retronauts installments about video game ads, the Nintendo GameCube, Doom, television games, and Spider-Man games. All this, and a close examination of a video...

In 2004, Hideo Kojima restored his famous series' reputation with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. This third entry in the Metal Gear Solid series eschewed the excessively meta approach of the previous sequel for a James Bond-ish romp in an entirely new setting that still provided plenty of convoluted--and incredibly amusing--twists and turns. The result is a modern classic that's brimming over wi...

Travel back in time to Midwest Gaming Classic, when Jeremy, Bob, and guest Caitlin Oliver (@sacaitlin) traveled even further back in time to the ’90s and the wild world of gender-bending anime Ranma 1/2... and all the games based on the series.

With the recent news that former Donkey Kong champion Billy Mitchell has had his score records revoked, Jeremy, Chris, and Benj look back at King of Kong, the documentary that chronicled his attempt to defend his records and painted him as a villain.

Jeremy, Benj, and Chris bring their multi-episode history of metroidvania games to a conclusion with a look at the genre's resurgence on Game Boy Advance and its new lease on life thanks to plucky indie gaming upstarts. Now, on to New Game +…

It's a double dose of Ultima! First, Jeremy and Bob chat with Jason Wilson and Rowan Kaiser from Gamesbeat to explore the RPG series' legacy, then Richard Garriott (Lord British himself) shares anecdotes about the origins and evolution of the games.

We're back with our follow-up to Retronauts Micro 87, which dives even deeper into the history of video game advertising. This time around, we leap from the "Have you played Atari today?" era of TV spots to the brilliant-but-now-amusing way Nintendo carefully worked around Americans' anxiety about video games with their focus on R.O.B. And, unfortunately, this era also sees basically everyone but...

Nintendo followed up the modest success of the N64 with the GameCube: A small, sleek little system devoted solely to playing games. But in an era where the PlayStation 2's exclusives, backwards compatibility, and DVD playback features obliterated the competition, Nintendo found their nice little piece of hardware unable to gain any true traction. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Kat...