My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

A special episode with the winner of the My Perfect Console of the Year award, as voted by the listeners to the show. Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Take the Acast listener survey to help shape the show: My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin Survey 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Has 2024 been a good year for video games? Host  Simon Parkin  and comedian  Glenn Moore  each pick their five favourites of the year. Will any of their choices overlap? Will the game in the top spot start with a vowel? Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Take the Acast listener survey to help shape the show:...

My guest today is G. T. Karber, the innovative crime writer and creator of the Murdle series of puzzle books. The son of a judge and a civil rights attorney, he studied mathematics and English literature at the University of Arkansas , then took a Masters at the USC School of Cinematic Arts . It was while he was working on a project in a coffee shop that he scribbled down a crime-themed puzzle on...

Billy Basso is an American creator of video games. Born in Chicago, he studied film, then earned his masters in Computer Science at DePaul University . After a stint working as a video editor, he moved into game development, first making educational games for schools in Chicago, and later at NetherRealm Studios , where he worked on smartphone versions of Mortal Kombat  and Injustice . In...

In this special correspondence edition, Simon reads out your correspondence and answers your questions. Which ten games have been picked in the first 100 episodes more than any others? What are the best Christmas-themed video games? What are the best video game sound effects of all time? Who are the video game industry's true founding fathers (or mothers)? And a special teaser for Simon's next boo...

Jordan Mechner is an American author, game designer, graphic novelist and screenwriter. While a student at Yale University he designed and programmed the martial arts game Karateka . To create the animations in the game he pioneered a rotoscoping process to capture Super 8 film footage of his friends and family members. My guest further developed this technique for his next game. Prince of Persia...

Andy Macnamars is the former editor-in-chief of  Game Informer.  He joined the bi-monthly magazine for its launch in 1991 as an editorial assistant. Within eighteen months he had been promoted to editor’s seat, which he the occupied for 25 years, growing the magazine’s readership from around 60,000 subscribers to, at its height, eight million, making it one of the most widely read public...

Corrine and John are the director and creative director of  Dragon Age: The Veilguard . Corinne Busche majored in digital animation at the  University of Utah . In 2006 she joined the studio now known as  EA Saltlake , working through the ranks to become a Design Director for  The Sims  series. John Epler studied English language and literature at the  University of A...

My guest today is the American voice-actor and activist Sarah Elmaleh. As a student at Wesleyan University she performed in a variety of theatrical productions and radio plays, spending a portion of her studies at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford. After graduating she moved to Brooklyn, New York, and was working as a stage actor when she fell in with the city's game development scene,...

My guest today is the founder and director of ZeniMax Online Studio, Matt Firor. After studying history at George Washington University , he co-founded the developer Interesting Systems Inc ., where he created a MUD-style text adventure titled Darkness Falls . In 1995 he co-founded Mythic Entertainment , where he produced pioneering online games such as Godzilla Online , Aliens Online , Starship T...

My guest today is a French film director and pioneer in the world of digital imaging. Born in Paris, he studied architecture and medicine at university before joining the film industry. He co-founded  Duran Duboi , a postproduction house that created visual effects for music videos by artists including  Prince ,  Madonna ,  Lenny Kravitz , and  Boy George . As a VFX pionee...

My guest today is Hannah Nicklin, a British writer and narrative designer for video games. After studying Drama at Loughborough University , and Playwriting at the University of Birmingham , she returned to Loughborough for a doctorate in interactive design as anti-capitalist practice. After several years working as a poet, theatre-maker, and academic, in 2019 she moved into games full time: writi...

My guest today is the award-winning humourist, writer, and presenter Danny Wallace. Born in Dundee, Scotland, he published his first professional video game review at the age of thirteen while conducting work experience for Sega Power , a magazine that subsequently offered him a job. At 22, after graduating from The University of Westminster , he became a BBC comedy producer at, working on hit ser...

My guest today is Nainita Desai, the British composer for film, television and video games. Born and raised in London by her Indian parents, she earned a degree in mathematics, then studied sound design at the National Film and Television School . She started her career as a sound designer on the films Little Buddha , Lessons of Darkness and Death Machine , before branching into composition for te...

My guest today is the American video game designer and programmer Eugene Jarvis. Born in California, he studied computer science at Berkeley , where, in the basement of the physics laboratory, he played the early video game Spacewar . After graduating he worked for Hewlitt Packard , but quit after three days to join Atari , where he began programming for some of the first computerised pinball mach...

My guest today is the German filmmaker Uwe Boll. Born in Wermelskirchen he decided he wanted to direct films at the age of ten, after seeing Marlon Brando star in Mutiny on the Bounty . It wasn’t until he was in his mid-thirties, however, that he directed his first major motion picture, Blackwoods , a psychological thriller that a critic for the New York Times described as ‘smart and diabolical’....

My guest today is the American video game artist and designer, Derek Yu. Born in Pasadena, California in the early eighties, he started mapping out games on graph paper when he was still a child. After graduating college with a degree in computer science, he moved to San Francisco to work as a freelance illustrator. In 2007 he developed a satirical run-and-gun freeware game titled “ I’m O.K – A Mu...

In this special correspondence edition, host Simon Parkin reads out listeners' correspondence and answers your questions. Hear Simon discuss the recent, headline-making episode with former PlayStation President Chris Deering, listener responses to the controversy, as well as discussion of what term we should use to describe the genre formerly known as 'Metroidvania', Maddy Thorson's grey label pla...

My guest today is an American businessman and the former and first president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe , Chris Deering. Raised in Boston, Massachusetts to immigrant parents, my guest had a strict upbringing. Despite the disadvantages he faced, he graduated with distinction with a degree in computer science at Boston College , then studied marketing at Harvard Business School . He first...

My guest today is Eliot Higgins, a British citizen journalist and founder of Bellingcat , a website that specialises in open-source intelligence. In 2012, while unemployed, he became involved in online discussions about the conflict in Syria, where few journalists were able to operate. Despite having little prior interest in the region, he began to study videos of the conflict, and started a blog...

In this special episode, Simon is joined by comedian Glenn Moore  to discuss the subject of July's My Perfect Console 'Game Club', The Messenger . Throughout July 2024, Glenn and Simon, along with many of you, the listeners, played through the 2018 platformer The Messenger, a game chosen by Abu Salim  during his episode of My Perfect Console. Glenn and Simon discuss their experiences wit...

My guest today is Maddy Thorson, a Canadian writer and designer for video games. At the age of 14, she obtained a copy of GameMaker , software on which she learned to make simple games. After studying computer science at Grande Prairie Regional College in Alberta, she moved to Vancouver and there rented a house in which she and her friends began working on a multiplayer combat game featuring four...

My guest today is Holly Gramazio, a writer, curator, and game designer. Born in Australia, she earned her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide , then moved to London where she founded the Somerset House -based games festival Now Play This , an annual celebration of experimental games. In 2019 she wrote the script for Dicey Dungeons , a game that subsequently sold 850,000 copies an...

In this special episode, five My Perfect Console supporters share the games they would like to put on their ideal, fictional games machine, and the reasons behind their choices. If you would like to share your console with the My Perfect Console audience, head to www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole where you can become a supporter and receive a raft of these and other benefits. Become a My Perfect Co...

My guest today is Luke Muscat, the Australian video game designer behind some of the best-known smart phone games yet made. After graduating from Queensland University of Technology with a degree in IT and Games, he joined Halfbrick Studio , a game developer in Brisbane that specialised in games licensed from film and TV. There he designed a simple yet compelling iPhone game in which players must...