I personally consider the 1UP Yours podcast to be the most important gaming podcast of all time and one of the predecessors of the personality-driven gaming coverage that is standard today. As with 1UP.com, the site that hosted it, 1UP Yours has been dead for years-- but with the ten-year anniversary of the show coming up soon ** , I've been going back through old episodes. Below are some of my retrospective thoughts, in no particular order.
If you'd like to follow along with me, check out archived episodes of the show at The 1UP Podcast Preservation Society.
** February 3rd, 2006 was the first episode under the name "1UP Yours". The show had been around for several months prior to that under the name "1UP Radio", originally hosted by Jane Pinckard and then by Garnett Lee, who remained the host until the show ended several years later.
- Discussion is almost universally gaming-focused. I think it would still be some time before we got to a point with gaming podcasts where people thought hour-long discussions of Taco Bell weren't out of place.
- It's striking how seriously Garnett Lee took his role as host of this podcast. Constantly you can hear him going through a stack of papers-- printouts of show itineraries and pre-selected emails. Conversation topics come and go quickly, and the crew is prepared for almost every discussion that comes up. There's a segment called Four Minute Warning in which Garnett selects conversation topics based on suggestions from folks on the 1UP message board, and the crew discusses each topic for no more than four minutes. Sometimes they get through topics in less than four minutes and their analysis, in many cases, still resonates as being insightful when I listen to it today. I attribute this focus partially to Garnett's dedication but also to the fact that smartphones and high-speed data plans had not become as widespread as they are today.
- That having been said, when Garnett gets drunk or when there's a lady on the show, the listening experience can be... awkward.
- You can definitely see where some of the podcast language has been influenced by a more diverse audience over time. On this podcast they call things "gay", they joke about each other being gay, they make a lot more dick jokes and they use the word "retard" to describe things frequently (e.g., the Xbox 360 $299 SKU being the "retard pack"). If the same crew were to record this podcast today I don't think you'd hear much of that if any. I remember reading old 1UP Yours threads in which people eventually asked them not to do so much of that, and in the crew's more recent podcasts such as Weekend Confirmed, it's much less prevalent.
- John Davison still stands out as one of the most brilliant folks that ever appeared on a gaming podcast. I've heard him on other podcasts since and he's great, but he was never better than he was with this crew.
- Kathleen Sanders was amazing. Insightful, confident, hilarious. I wonder what she's doing these days? Someone should get her on a podcast again.
If you'd like to follow along with me, check out archived episodes of the show at The 1UP Podcast Preservation Society.
** February 3rd, 2006 was the first episode under the name "1UP Yours". The show had been around for several months prior to that under the name "1UP Radio", originally hosted by Jane Pinckard and then by Garnett Lee, who remained the host until the show ended several years later.
