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Retronauts Podcast Thread
- Thread starter krae_man
- Start date
ToastyFrog
Inexplicable Treasure Hate
Thanks! I am curious to see if they're going to go with some of the rating numbers I submitted. I let my biases run free and gave Secret of Mana and Yoshi's Island outlandishly high sound and graphics ratings, respectively.
I hope there is an extensive section on "Video Manga" in this issue!
got my subscriber edition today. Mana sound 95% and Yoshi graphics 92%.
Chairman Yang
if he talks about books, you better damn well listen
Uh, where's the bias in those objectively correct opinions?
Jerry Orbach
Member
If you give 16-bit Yoshi's Island 100%, what are you going to do when 64-bit Yoshi's Island comes out? Giving it 92% allows for eight more graphical generations after the SNES, at which point we'll all be playing on Google glasses or whatever and the scale can be reset. It's a smart play.
ToastyFrog
Inexplicable Treasure Hate
I can't believe it took us this long to have him on the show. We'll definitely aim to get him back on more often.
Did Kevin Bacon save the day?
Been waiting for the Zork episode for awhile, and it was worth it.
I sent in the letter about the version that let you choose verbs/nouns, just downloaded it from a BBS in the 90s.
Would like to mention that a man named Graham Nelson actually reversed engineered the z-code format in the early 90s and gave birth to the inform language which lets you make IF in the style of infocom games that will run on z-code interpreters.
And before there was twine there was inform, TADS, adrift, and a few other IF engines, and an annual IF competition that's still going strong that had its roots on usenet #old.
Also, think the James Pond reference might actually be for a Magnetic Scrolls game called Fish! that also has secret agents as gold fish (IF with great water-color style pictures.)
Finally, it's my goal in life to have Jeremy Parish play Counterfeit Monkey, an IF game written in inform that when played in a GLUXL interpreter has (very) limited graphics and a map on screen.
It's what I call a _literal_ text adventure, having you manipulate language to solve puzzles, with a metroidvania flair, since your ability to manipulate words expounds as you play. The plot and setting are also ace.
I sent in the letter about the version that let you choose verbs/nouns, just downloaded it from a BBS in the 90s.
Would like to mention that a man named Graham Nelson actually reversed engineered the z-code format in the early 90s and gave birth to the inform language which lets you make IF in the style of infocom games that will run on z-code interpreters.
And before there was twine there was inform, TADS, adrift, and a few other IF engines, and an annual IF competition that's still going strong that had its roots on usenet #old.
Also, think the James Pond reference might actually be for a Magnetic Scrolls game called Fish! that also has secret agents as gold fish (IF with great water-color style pictures.)
Finally, it's my goal in life to have Jeremy Parish play Counterfeit Monkey, an IF game written in inform that when played in a GLUXL interpreter has (very) limited graphics and a map on screen.
It's what I call a _literal_ text adventure, having you manipulate language to solve puzzles, with a metroidvania flair, since your ability to manipulate words expounds as you play. The plot and setting are also ace.
charlequin
Banned
Oh man, TADS. This is taking me back to an IF community April Fool's joke from two decades ago, because I am old and useless.
Sapiens
Member
An easy way to play zork on Linux or Mac is to use Frotz:
https://www.eugenemdavis.com/playing-zork-linux-frotz.html
sudo apt-get install frotz
or for Mac: brew install frotz
And then just download the files from infocom: http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html
and then just run the game via pointing to the dat file in the downloaded file using frotz like so:
frotz ZORK1.dat
https://www.eugenemdavis.com/playing-zork-linux-frotz.html
sudo apt-get install frotz
or for Mac: brew install frotz
And then just download the files from infocom: http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html
and then just run the game via pointing to the dat file in the downloaded file using frotz like so:
frotz ZORK1.dat
El Pescado
Member
I can't believe I missed the call for the Arcade episode. My family ran one on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights until '95. I grew up in that arcade. I had free reign over the whole place in the Golden Era of the American Arcade. We got bought out right before the whole industry came crashing down.
Great Zork episode! It made me want to try interactive fiction again. I enjoy playing it, but I often stop forever once I get stuck. Oops.
My favourite way to play interactive fiction is Frotz on the iPhone. It comes pre-loaded with a bunch of IF titles including Zork, and you can search for and add new titles directly from the app, including the other Zork games.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frotz/id287653015?mt=8
My favourite way to play interactive fiction is Frotz on the iPhone. It comes pre-loaded with a bunch of IF titles including Zork, and you can search for and add new titles directly from the app, including the other Zork games.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frotz/id287653015?mt=8
Etrian Oddity
Member
OH SHIT Jeff Green back on Retronauts!!!!
Also, where do I hear the Retronauts' opinions on Octopath Traveler?
Also, where do I hear the Retronauts' opinions on Octopath Traveler?
ToastyFrog
Inexplicable Treasure Hate
We are recording a SaGa episode next week, so....OH SHIT Jeff Green back on Retronauts!!!!
Also, where do I hear the Retronauts' opinions on Octopath Traveler?
can you dedicate 30 minutes to how gorgeous saga frontier 2 is?
I can't wait to hear what you guys have to say about Frontier 2. As a historian, the way it tells its story has always occupied a spot in my heart.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Great Zork episode! It made me want to try interactive fiction again. I enjoy playing it, but I often stop forever once I get stuck. Oops.
My favourite way to play interactive fiction is Frotz on the iPhone. It comes pre-loaded with a bunch of IF titles including Zork, and you can search for and add new titles directly from the app, including the other Zork games.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/frotz/id287653015?mt=8
For a while I was using voice recognition to play the official Activision iOS release of the Lost Treasures of Infocom:
The gimmick wore off tho and now "this app needs to be updated to improve its compatibility."
Yay Jeff Green, I've been missing him on everything.OH SHIT Jeff Green back on Retronauts!!!!
Also, where do I hear the Retronauts' opinions on Octopath Traveler?
Interesting. I've heard mixed things about the Playstation titles, but the recently translated iOS/Android port of Romancing Saga 2 (originally for the Super Famicom) is pretty cool. I don't know if it's likely to come up during that episode recording though.
Is it true that Unlimited Saga came with a gigantic guide in Japan? Playing that game felt like playing a tabletop RPG with a GM who wouldn't let me see the rules.
ispendtoomuchmoneyongames
Member
really enjoyed next week's Yoshi Island episode, excited to play it on the SNES Classic in the original incarnation. I can't remember the last time I played the original cart.
Etrian Oddity
Member
Aw don't tease me man.
Are we gonna get some Hamauzu and Kenji Ito in the music interludes? :3
Oh, I remember textfire. fyre? one game was insane, verb? or something like that?
Also, looks like lost treasures of infocom isn't 64 bit so wont work on new ios, frotz on ios is upgraded though
charlequin
Banned
The recent-ish Mario Kart episode which I just got to this past week was a local high point, I think, excellent discussion and lots of great information about the franchise. YI ep is quite good (I think every one of these single-game entries on the classic Nintendo canon have been very solid, really) as well.
Fenster Mayhew
Member
Thank you!
PaulBizkit
Member
I listened to the Yoshi's Island episode like three times already. What a great episooode!
I love how you segment the conversation between the release/port history, the people behind it, and the game itself. I wish you had more time to talk about the game itself, mainly because the last 30 minutes were like "ok, we're running out of time, if you have something to say, say it now!!"
btw, how do you run out of time in podcast??
. A 3-hour talk about Yoshi's Island would be great
I love how you segment the conversation between the release/port history, the people behind it, and the game itself. I wish you had more time to talk about the game itself, mainly because the last 30 minutes were like "ok, we're running out of time, if you have something to say, say it now!!"
btw, how do you run out of time in podcast??
I used to host a 1-hour radio show a couple of years ago and I envied the time flexibility of podcasts
charlequin
Banned
Now that I've said that: omg when is the Zelda Oracles episode
After watching Giant Bomb's Quicklook of the SNES Classic and watching Jeremy's reviews, I'm realizing I'd pay for an extra-long episode with a discussion between Jeff Gerstmann and Jeremy.
They both have an amazing breadth of knowledge about retro gaming, but appear to come to very different opinions about things.
I'd love to hear them discuss it.
They both have an amazing breadth of knowledge about retro gaming, but appear to come to very different opinions about things.
I'd love to hear them discuss it.
RadarScope1
Member
Seriously. This is an epic, worlds-collide type of crossover that NEEDS to happen.
ToastyFrog
Inexplicable Treasure Hate
Super Mario Sunshine goes up for patrons this week. Close enough?
Fenster Mayhew
Member
For the San Francisco studio episodes, we record in two six-hour blocks: one on a Saturday, and one on a Sunday. Then we schedule two hours for each episode recording to give us time to take a break in the middle of a session, and in case any guests are late. This schedule is pretty tight, and we want to respect our guests' time, since they are people who come out to our studio instead of website employees pulled into a podcast room during the work day. That's basically why we rarely go over 90 minutes.
I know Jeff hates Yoshi games and DKC, but what about Super Metroid and Metroid in general?
RadarScope1
Member
Just did the food mascot games podcast. That was way more entertaining than it had any right to be. Good topic!
Also, I had Avoid the Noid for DOS on my old Radio Shack Tandy. It was kinda good!
Also, I had Avoid the Noid for DOS on my old Radio Shack Tandy. It was kinda good!
PaulBizkit
Member
Been watching the yoshi's island speedrun you suggested, and it's been a blast so far. I love how everybody claps when the piranha plant is defeated before the fight.
oh I see. I thought you had your own studio.
That raisins joke was gold.
oh I see. I thought you had your own studio.
That raisins joke was gold.
Fenster Mayhew
Member
We do have our own studio and technically could podcast in it for as long as we wanted to. But our aging brains/bodies can only handle so much podcasting in a day, and we also want to respect the time of people who are sacrificing part of their weekend to be on the show.
ToastyFrog
Inexplicable Treasure Hate
Note also that the studio is a tiny room with no ventilation, so after six hours we've run out of oxygen and can no longer form coherent sentences.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Recently pulled down the Zork episode. Very nice, thorough, I didn't really think Zork would carry a whole episode but it did and then some!
Infocom games were indeed very hard, and I often just couldn't measure up, even with Invisiclues.
They did put out a couple of "easy mode" games, in fact if I recall correctly every Infocom game came with a difficulty rating right on the little corner label thing on the boxes.
One of these was honesty way too simple simple and called Seastalker:
It was ostensibly "Junior Level" and definitely the easiest Infocom adventure out there, but even though I was at the time, in fact, a kid, it was a bit too simple. You have a minimal set of locations and not much of a maze in the original seabase structure, but them once you left that it all took place in the cockpit of a submersible. It was very very short (like, 40 pts total or so), but I beat that.
More fondly remembered, for me, was Wishbringer:
This one was "introductory Level" and I managed my way through it. It was set on a mysterious island (or was it a peninsula?) with a mysterious post office and a glowing stone that granted wishes. It was a bit Alice in Wonderland, as I recall. One of the feelies with this one was a plastic stone which glowed in the dark, only purple instead of the stock-standard ghostly green that nearly all phosphorescent doo-dads at the time had. I became fascinated with it and after beating the game, put the wishbringer on a chain to hang near my bed as a kid.
I also played a fair amount of Infidel but didn't beat that one. Still, I have a lot of fond memories of the era and the company's games. They came from an era where having your game go unsolved was almost a badge of acomplishment for a designer: a fiendish win on the part of the puzzle-box-maker, against whom you were alone... with only a book with invisible ink (and a highlighter) and some graph paper to guide you.
I've yet to see Activision update the iOS port of Lost Treasure of Infocom so it will run on iOS 11, I hope they do get around to it. As much as you can play these or any other IF games on a solid Z Interpreter, there's something to seeing the original art, and representations of the feelies. It may just be nostalgia but its part of what made Infocom special and so considering how much we remember those feelies, they were a good idea! Using LTOI on my phone, I used to use voice recognition to try and input commands. It was clunky and awkward but it worked.
I've often wondered why IF hasn't made headway into the modern gaming space via the new voice recognition software and algorhythms out there. Kinect took the voice command limelight over at MS, but even before it voice recognition commands were going into the console via headset mic with games like Endwar (IIRC). I didn't play Lifeline, but I did spend a lot of futile effort shouting "Hey, Pikachu" one time... but forget the bad memories. I'm assuming the tech you could put in a game would work about as well as the voice recognition tech on my phone, which is pretty good, really.
True, "pure interactive fiction" involves reading as the main way to experience the game, words and imagination as the medium. But I've often wondered if an adventure game with fantastic visual fidelity could operate via IF syntax commands if you fed that text parser with voice recognition. Seems like it could have applications in VR as well, where there's only so many gameplay options to be created out of motion control and shooting gallery mechanics. If commercial IF does ever experience a comeback, I imagine it will be in this way.
Infocom games were indeed very hard, and I often just couldn't measure up, even with Invisiclues.
They did put out a couple of "easy mode" games, in fact if I recall correctly every Infocom game came with a difficulty rating right on the little corner label thing on the boxes.
One of these was honesty way too simple simple and called Seastalker:
It was ostensibly "Junior Level" and definitely the easiest Infocom adventure out there, but even though I was at the time, in fact, a kid, it was a bit too simple. You have a minimal set of locations and not much of a maze in the original seabase structure, but them once you left that it all took place in the cockpit of a submersible. It was very very short (like, 40 pts total or so), but I beat that.
More fondly remembered, for me, was Wishbringer:
This one was "introductory Level" and I managed my way through it. It was set on a mysterious island (or was it a peninsula?) with a mysterious post office and a glowing stone that granted wishes. It was a bit Alice in Wonderland, as I recall. One of the feelies with this one was a plastic stone which glowed in the dark, only purple instead of the stock-standard ghostly green that nearly all phosphorescent doo-dads at the time had. I became fascinated with it and after beating the game, put the wishbringer on a chain to hang near my bed as a kid.
I also played a fair amount of Infidel but didn't beat that one. Still, I have a lot of fond memories of the era and the company's games. They came from an era where having your game go unsolved was almost a badge of acomplishment for a designer: a fiendish win on the part of the puzzle-box-maker, against whom you were alone... with only a book with invisible ink (and a highlighter) and some graph paper to guide you.
I've yet to see Activision update the iOS port of Lost Treasure of Infocom so it will run on iOS 11, I hope they do get around to it. As much as you can play these or any other IF games on a solid Z Interpreter, there's something to seeing the original art, and representations of the feelies. It may just be nostalgia but its part of what made Infocom special and so considering how much we remember those feelies, they were a good idea! Using LTOI on my phone, I used to use voice recognition to try and input commands. It was clunky and awkward but it worked.
I've often wondered why IF hasn't made headway into the modern gaming space via the new voice recognition software and algorhythms out there. Kinect took the voice command limelight over at MS, but even before it voice recognition commands were going into the console via headset mic with games like Endwar (IIRC). I didn't play Lifeline, but I did spend a lot of futile effort shouting "Hey, Pikachu" one time... but forget the bad memories. I'm assuming the tech you could put in a game would work about as well as the voice recognition tech on my phone, which is pretty good, really.
True, "pure interactive fiction" involves reading as the main way to experience the game, words and imagination as the medium. But I've often wondered if an adventure game with fantastic visual fidelity could operate via IF syntax commands if you fed that text parser with voice recognition. Seems like it could have applications in VR as well, where there's only so many gameplay options to be created out of motion control and shooting gallery mechanics. If commercial IF does ever experience a comeback, I imagine it will be in this way.
PaulBizkit
Member
Right, I totally forgot that you record SEVERAL podcasts in a day. Now that I have your attention... is that the reason why the Retronauts' Resident Evil episode is only 1:30 hours long and not 2?
I always have a Retronauts episode on my phone
For example, there was a point in the Yoshi's Island episode where you finished talking about the technical details and the production of the game and started talking about the game itself and your experience with it.
However, that was rather lacking in RE's episode (specially in RE3's segment).
I hope this doesn't come out as negative/not constructive criticism. I just love to hear the different experiences each of you had (with games in general).
What are the chances that you'll make another RE-related
(or RElated)
Yeah, that totally sucks.
Fenster Mayhew
Member
All of our main episodes are planned out to be 90 minutes long, but I believe for the Resident Evil episode we had one guest cancel and one not show up, and luckily Dave was in the area to be our only guest. I also think I stupidly planned out three series overviews for that recording weekend, which is a LOT to do on top of a full-time job. Now I try to aim for one series overview, one single-game deep-dive, and one frivolous topic per weekend. That said, I'm still happy with how the RE episode turned out, given the circumstances.
RadarScope1
Member
You guys are really killing it lately. All good stuff. What really helps, of course, is all the continued attention retro gaming is getting nowadays. These eras of gaming just keep getting more and more appreciated every year.
Suggestion for a micro topic: Mario Bros. Given its place in the transition from DK to SMB and the three versions that were released (arcade, NES, FDS/PAL re-release) it would be worth 10 to 12 minutes! And of course, the Switch release out now.
Suggestion for a micro topic: Mario Bros. Given its place in the transition from DK to SMB and the three versions that were released (arcade, NES, FDS/PAL re-release) it would be worth 10 to 12 minutes! And of course, the Switch release out now.