Famicom Dojo Video Game Podcast

Rob Matsushita is a Madison, WI based filmmaker and playright. More importantly for our purposes he is also host of the 10 Minutes About Your Favorite Movie podcast on the Little Podcast Network. We're big fans of his show, and thought that the best way to get Dojo Disciples to become fans to is to show him how awesome it is through the lens of video games. Fortunately, Rob plays them too. Vinnk,...

Some of our favorite Famicom and NES games are nearing the end of their respective lifespans. Famicom Disk System games degrade, no matter how well you take care of them. Cartridge games with battery backups will eventually lose power, along with your data, and never be able to save again. Even the batteries that help consoles like the PS2 and Dreamcase keep time are fizzling out. Is there anythin...

Way back when we ended Season 1 of the video series, we announced our new Denshimail segment. While we've answered many of your questions in video forms, we've only been getting more and more of them in the years since. While we'd love to answer many of the in video format, we have a lot of catching up to do! Vinnk and Sean answer a backlog of voicemails, and a selection of listener and viewer que...

We haven't been to Tokyo Game Show in person, but that doesn't mean we haven't been to Tokyo Game Show! Famicom Dojo has had an official presence covering the show in 2013 and 2014. This year we got Mr. Presence on the show to discuss what he saw on the floor this year. Sean and Vinnk welcome David to the podcast for the first time to talk about how the console market is going, bemoan Square-Enix'...

Is it wonderful or worrying that two grown men need a place to store all of their stuff from a childhood that in some ways never ended? Or is doing a podcast and video series about classic video games excuse enough? Vinnk and Sean have both moved into new houses, and new places to keep all of their cool stuff. Sean rediscovers Punch Out for Wii in Future Retro, and Vinnk tells the harrowing tale o...

It's a bit later than expected, but the 3DS has finally gotten the second stick (well, a nub really), and enough buttons to make it nearly feature complete with a Wii U GamePad. A herald of things to come for Nintendo, or sheer coincidence? Sean and Vinnk wonder if this is the next logical step for the 3DS, or merely a placeholder for what's really coming next. Vinnks Zonks out with Future Retro,...

After the y cant metroid crawl meme sprang into being upon the release of Super Metroid on the Wii U Virtual Console, Sean recorded a bunch of footage performing tricks in the game, but it's been over a year and we haven't made it into a proper video yet. Sean put out the raw footage on another YouTube channel at the same time Phil was working through the GBA Metroid games. So we decided to talk t...

Shovel Knight is more than a retro-styled game made to make you wistful of a bygone era -- it makes you wish that era had never ended, and gives a glimpse of what it may have been like if it hadn't. From emulating an actual Famicom sound chip to sticking almost entirely within the capabilities of the NES hardware, Shovel Knight is nothing less than a work of art. It's also pretty fun to play! And...

When we were kids, someone introduced each of us to the world of video games. Maybe it was a parent, or a friend who had the latest and greatest. Or maybe that love developed in arcades and translated into the home. This week, we revisit the formative years that made us gamers. And we have other stories that listeners like you sent in to celebrate our 100th episode. Sean and Vinnk interview their...

The thing about being a gainfully-employed adult and parent is that time becomes your most precious commodity. So any time you use for games can only be used on the good ones -- if you can figure out which ones those are. Vinnk and Sean reveal how they balance their real lives with gaming life, how the Wii U is great for that, and get all excited over Future Retro that's really just a quasi-remake...

It's amazing how things looked a year ago, with Nintendo all but left for dead by the gaming press. Now, with a much-needed lift by Mario Kart 8 and a killer showing at E3, Nintendo looks like it might earn the title of number one console (in Japan) -- and not just because the PS4 is selling so poorly there. And perhaps do better in America too. Whatever works. Sean and Vinnk skip Future Retro and...

Nintendo appeases the hardcore Super Smash Bros. tournament crowd with a wired adapter for GameCube controls, playable at the Smash Bros Invitational. The newest Mario Kart was released last week, selling out Pro Controllers everywhere, crashing the Club Nintendo website, and increasing sales of the Wii U in the UK alone by 666%. In less than a week, Mario Kart 8 has sold 1.2 million copies worldw...

We've long been wary of digital services on consoles at Famicom Dojo, because every time one shuts down there's the inevitable pain that follows, and features that can never be recaptured. This is what is happening with the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection going dark this week, which takes with it all online multiplayer (and related features) for not only Wii and DS titles, but anything that relied on Ga...

Physical game releases, and increasingly their digital versions as well, often get a hefty price cut as the game ages, but the price of the DLC never goes down. Should it? Vinnk and Sean backtrack on some earlier positions to talk about DLC they like, grapple with their feelings on DLC in general, and what alternatives publishers can pursue without giving up a revenue stream that helps to increase...

NES Remix 2 is chock full of sequels to games from NES Remix 1, and of course NES followups to other games not seen in the series before. Conventional wisdom dictates that sequels are mere cash-ins of a great idea, but sometimes they can perfect that idea in fun and surprising ways. Sean and Vinnk discuss the sequels we think are better than the originals, some clearly superior, others more contro...

Recent installments of the Super Smash Bros. series have included characters from third party companies as fighters joining the Nintendo menagerie. Game developers often hide references to their other titles in some of their games, either by obscure references or through sharing characters -- sometimes where they don't really belong. Gamers seem to enjoy these cross-overs and in=jokes... but why?...

While the rest of the world is picking up the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at an admirable pace (sorry, Wii U), the former was only just released earlier this year in Japan, and the latter is not yet on store shelves. The latest Nintendo Direct makes it seem like the company doesn't understand that they need to support the Wii U over the 3DS with games like Smash Bros., but perhaps the situation und...

We're four generations deep into reasonably realistic 3D graphics based on nothing more than colored triangles, but if you go back to the first fully 3D console graphics the picture isn't so pretty. And yet we loved these games all the same. Was it am amazing as we thought, or were we just kidding ourselves? Vinnk and Sean try to take off their rose-colored glasses and give a serious look to the N...

We take a trip over to our friend's house where everything sounds different. Er, where you play the games that you didn't play at your house because you didn't own the system, didn't own the game, weren't ALLOWED to own the system or game, or just like the atmosphere better than at your place. And for this episode, we invited a few friends over to our house! Zac ( @ZacShipley ), aDam ( @aDamRulz )...

Sometimes the show runs a little long, or goes completely off-topic. That's when we create an audio bonus, exclusively for the website! When we first started the podcast, we fully intended to create such extra content to help drive traffic back to the website since there was no other way to listen to it. But, as it turns out, people just don't find that enticing! So, despite the desire to keep thi...

In the ever-shifting landscape of video game development, there are major players and the scrappy underdogs. Kickstarter has given smaller studios a bigger voice, but back in the day before the Internet was a thing, which companies set themselves apart? And which ones have fallen apart since? Sean and Vinnk talk about their favorite publishers and developers of today, the classics of yesteryear, a...

Before EA, official sports titles were more spread out, and used in all kind of ways. Games like NBA Jam are hard to come by these days (barring updates to NBA Jam). Before annual installments of Year of the Same Game, you had crazy sports game ideas that were one and done. These weren't simulators, like we have today, but imaginitive riffs on the sports to make up for any technical proficiency th...

Sometimes a game gets a second life on a new platform or console, typically with upgraded graphics, additional sound effects and/or voices, and additional Internet-enabled features only a Millennial could love. Sometimes a familiar name is slapped onto an entirely new game that seeks to upend the status quo for the franchise and provide a clean slate -- usually with a new developer, and sometimes...

Phil Bond on the subject of f2p gaming: "When you make a game where paying any money whatsoever feels like cheating, that has to be a mistake -- right?" Or, as Vinnk puts it, you can pay to play more, or pay to play less. Sometimes both in the same game. Just don't say that Nintendo should follow this model, or... we'll say something not nice, or something. Vinnk and Sean trade stories of their pa...

Spearheading the revival of adventure games, Broken Age Act 1 was released last week on Steam for the Kickstarter backers (and press reviewers). A decision to black out reviews until later in January was reversed only a couple of days after the game came out. Broken Age is just that good. Even though we haven't finished it (as of recording this episode), we wholeheartedly agree that it will become...