Old Gamer’s Almanac

It's time to hug your friends with your fists, swords, and guns. Hunter is taking another journey into the work of Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza), this time with OGA veteran Sun Sanders! This game is like a side quest inside the world of the side questiest games we know of. Does that mean it feels right at home, or is this a bit TOO far to the side? To see the most up to version of the list and t...

Back into the 90s PC project and this week is our first dip into the RTS genre, that's the one we called the definitive PC gaming genre. We've had a number of strategy games we've wanted to play over the course of the show, and the first proper RTS on our list is Command & Conquer. In many ways, it was a major leap forward, but it is trapped in a genre that did a lot of evolving beyond it. Can we...

It's our first Off-Topic episode of our 90s PC Game season, as well as our first game from the Every Wheel of this season. Whitebush has generously suggested to us Crystalis for the NES, and I think they're on to something! This is an action RPG that feels like Zelda meets Dragon Quest with a delightful little story and a wonderful use of color and art. It's such a good NES game, Matt even liked i...

90's game #2 is another week spent in 1993 with the much slower paced puzzle classic, Myst. This is one of the most well-known PC games of all time as it managed to break into a mostly untapped demographic for the time. And how convenient is it that that demographic was OLDER PEOPLE. This is the Old Gamer's Almanac, so sounds like this one's for the home team. To see the most up to version of the...

We finally get to kick off this new season in earnest and we decided to start with a behemoth. Doom is one of if not the most important first person shooter ever made and it's legacy covers both level design and perfectly optimized system design. It almost seems like an insult to try and cover it in just a little over an hour, but we'll do our best! To see the most up to version of the list and th...

With one season fully under our belt (as well as a "season 0") it's time to begin our next project! The Old Farmers over at our Patreon decided on 90's PC Games months ago, but we haven't decided what exactly that entails until today! This is one of those episodes that's sort of like a company meeting that you get to listen to, but it's also more fun than that. We draft a handful of games and make...

Thank you to the patrons of Old Gamers' Almanac! They helped us reach one of our Patreon goals and as a reward, everyone gets a bonus episode. This time, we've invited Sun Sanders on to help us with the clash of the video game publishers. The Old Farmers (patron) helped us select and seed the top 16 video game publishers and today we will go through a series of matchups to rank only one of them su...

You made it! You've come a long way traveler, but we have finished our season exploring the year 2001 in video games. It wasn't enough to get all of those games added to our list though. So we sat down and held ourselves an old school awards ceremony. We'll put on our best EGM Editor hat and pretend we're calling the shots to determine the best games of 2001, FROM a 2001 perspective (except for wh...

We have finally arrived at our final game of 2001: A Game Odyssey and we're going out with a bang. Ico gave one of Sony's most legendary development studios its name and provided Fumito Ueda with a massive boost to his budding career in the game industry. Depending on who you ask Ico is either the overshadowed little brother of Shadow of Colossus, or the cliché video game hipster opportunity to sa...

It's the penultimate entry for 2001 and it's a BIG OL' DOOZY. We've got a long JRPG for this week and Matt is trapped in the dadlands, so we had to call in fellow JRPG lover Sun Sanders to help Hunter make sense of this game's legacy. Where does it rank amongst Final Fantasies? Where does it rank amongst 2001 games? Where does it rank amongst 73 seemingly random games? Well I hope you'll stick aro...

It's time for the run up to the finale of our 2001: A Game Odyssey season and we kick things off with one of the highest reviewed PC games of 2001 from one of gaming's most infamous creators, Peter Molyneux. Molyneux has been known as a brilliant game designer but also a bit of an over-embellisher and it's time to examine how that legacy looks 20+ years later... Music by nightcorey. https://soundc...

Our second spin of The Every Wheel for season 1 gave us Dead_Bob's To the Moon! It's a short, narrative focused independent game about life, love, loss, and like...memories and all this real, human stuff. What are we trying to say over here? That games is art or sumthin? Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey Consider contributing to our show on Patreon . Email us your thoughts on...

We're continuing two projects at once this week: the continuation of 2001: A Game Odyssey as well as our closer look at Hideo Kojima. That's right, Metal Gear Solid 2 is the best of both worlds! It's a critically important follow up in one of the biggest franchises of all time, and this is the game where the rails really come off. How does "the ending" feel now 22 years later? Music by nightcorey....

We pretended like you asked for this. It's like some sort of cruel joke we've played on ourselves. We went to our local Dave & Buster's and played as many games as we could muster and this is the chaotic downward spiral into madness that came about. This episode was recorded because we reached a goal on our Patreon. You can sign up for our patreon at https://www.patreon.com/oldgamersalmanac . We a...

Don't mind the weird American release date on this episode title. This game is 1988 through and through. This is Kojima's adventure game, cyberpunk masterpiece Snatcher and it's been referenced about a million times in every Kojima work since it's release. It's also an interesting peak into a world of more complicated adventure games and hopefully serves as a potential bridge to those older games....

2001: A Game Odyssey continues with our only mobile entry for the year, Advance Wars! This is a beloved classic but at least one of our hosts has never touched it. It also has the issue of being a tactics game in a world where we all have access to Into the Breach...and buddy that's a tough mountain to get over. Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey Consider contributing to our sh...

Today is an introspective trip down memory lane. No game from 2001 has more time spent from both our hosts (together) than Super Smash Bros. Melee and that is a source of great joy and, as always, in Matt's case some skeletons deep in the closet. How will this monolith stand up to the march of time and can we still look at it fondly? Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey Consider...

One more hiatus week before we return on topic to 2001: A Game Odyssey and this week we much go backwards to go forwards. (Which is also backwards) Matt is on the hunt for a 16-bit racing game that he actually likes and today's choice is Nintendo SNES launch title F-Zero. It's a strange game that hasn't had a new entry in many years and at this point feels like a forgotten relic. What's even more...

It's the holidays and that means we didn't specifically HAVE to play a video game this week. Instead, we saw our close friends and we wanted you to join in on a brief bit. We decided to hold our own little awards show. It's most about the games WE played this year, not necessarily the games that came out this year. But even that definition is a bit too restricting so just come along for the ride,...

Today, OGA gets political. And by political, I mean legal. And by legal, I mean Matt is suing Elden Ring for it's crimes against his psyche and free time. But with Hunter as defense attorney and Sun Sanders as judge, I can't imagine his case will hold much water. The only saving grace is a jury, bailiff and stenographer of his peers in E.J. Sanders.. Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nig...

We're on hiatus for 2001: A Game Odyssey and today specifically we wanted to play another entry for 2022. Neon White is a surprise hit published by Annapurna Interactive that is impressing everyone despite it's bold choices in story and art direction. It's a game all about speedrunning that is deeply entrenched in the history of speedrunning and I think that bodes well for it's chances on this lis...

It's time for our first entry on the Every Wheel! A few months ago we spun the wheel for the first time and the Wheel landed on Darkest Dungeon (provided by Geomorgski). So we played it, got properly stressed, spooked, and frightened and now we're here to tell our tale. This rogue-lite tactical turn based RPG is a beloved gem for a lot of people and we're new to the party, so let's see how it fare...

It's another off topic week during our 2001: A Game Odyssey season and we're just relishing in nostalgia. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a handful of hit arcade games in the 90's and this year Tribute Games brought us a delightful throwback to the classic beat-em-ups. This game is full of style and a lot of jokes for fans of TMNT or Saturday Morning cartoons. But is this genre still relevant? Mu...

Matt is gone again so Hunter is joined by our dear friend Sun Sanders. Last time Sun was on the show, we talked about Skyrim, and he was robbed an earnest opportunity to rank a western RPG. So this time the two of them discuss Tom Hall's Anachronox and boy you're just going to love their criteria for ranking this game. Mentioned in the show: Anachronox the Move ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9...

We're continuing our 2001 hiatus with Subset Games' Into the Breach. We love an indie game and we love an oft-overlooked genre, which means this little game is just screaming down OGA alley. Hunter describes it as a "perfect game," and it may take us a lot of time to decide what that's worth and how much of a tax it might be. Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey Consider contribu...