25 Jul 2020 — Filed in:
InterviewsI speak to Kelsey Lewin, a video game historian and collector, retro games store owner, and self-proclaimed Wonderswan enthusiast, about the challenges — and also the merits — of researching and archiving the artefacts connected to games development and culture, both past and present. She also shares her insights on how the growth in retro gaming helps fuel interest in games history, why some of the most interesting stories are far beyond the typical narratives of games history, what quirky things we can find when looking into the Wonderswan and its inventor, the famed Game Boy hardware designer Gunpei Yokoi, and much more.
Kelsey co-directs the Video Game History Foundation with Frank Cifaldi, where the two of them have been doing amazing work in preserving and archiving the artefacts of games development and culture — not so much the games themselves, but rather more the packaging and documentation, the source code, the marketing materials, the magazines, etc. And she also co-owns Pink Gorilla Games, a retro games store located in Seattle.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: games history explorers, video game history foundation, pink gorilla games, kelsey lewin, gunpei yokoi, nintendo, wonderswan, game preservation
16 Mar 2020 — Filed in:
SoundbitesNintendo Power founding editor and former Nintendo of America marketing executive Gail Tilden remembers her beginnings at the company — before the NES, before Nintendo Power, and even before desktop publishing.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: gail tilden, nintendo, 90s gaming, 1990s, marketing, nintendo power
06 Jun 2019 — Filed in:
Season 2 | SoundbitesFor the 35th anniversary of Tetris' original Russian version, I pulled out this clip from my interview with Henk Rogers — co-founder of The Tetris Company and the dude who got Tetris handheld and console publishing rights back in the 1980s (and also creator of what was arguably the first JRPG, The Black Onyx).
Listen for Henk's memories about the strategy inherent in the game's scoring system and the story of how they fixed a bias in the Game Boy version's random number generator.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, alexey pajitnov, game boy, henk rogers, nintendo, tetris
01 Jul 2019 — Filed in:
Episodes | Season 2How Nintendo and its mascot created a genre, and a combat-racing franchise heavyweight, and in the process gave us a masterclass in game balance, with the best-selling 1992 Super Nintendo game Super Mario Kart.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, super mario kart, nintendo, super nintendo, mario, racing, multiplayer games, japanese games
