miketheratguy

Oh no, I couldn't say when the photo was from. You said that you preferred the simple wrappers which made me wonder if that particular photo was from an older or newer bar. Seems newer. And to be honest, the first thing I thought of after sending my previous post was indeed "I wonder if he'd be willing to send me some of those things".

Hate you so much. Hate you soooo much. Unfortunately the only exposure I ever had to the delicious wunder-treat that is the Mr. Big bar was during the scant few months that I could find it, when it had Shaquille 'O Neal on the label. So for the longest time I actually didn't even know it was called Mr. Big (I just assumed that was 'O Neal's nickname) and ran around referring to it as the Shaq Snaq. That first label that I posted was the best picture of the bar (without Shaq) that I could find, and as a result I actually have no idea when it's even from.

Ah okay, it's good to know that I wasn't going insane. I can see how easily both of the items could be confused, given the similarity of their names. Man, I can't believe some of the stuff you guys remember. I guess it depends on the game. I haven't played Dragon Warrior since....well probably since not long after I got my free copy from Nintendo Power. I should revisit that one sometime.

I recall the Moogle Charm and had actually thought of mentioning it before remembering (apparently incorrectly) that it stopped all battles, not just the pesky lower-level ones. Same with the Dragon Warrior Fair Water, which I thought only lessened your overall chances of encounters rather than preventing annoying and potentially disease-ridden slime confrontations.

Truth be told I love Skyrim as well despite how much I complain about it. On its own merits it's a great game, I just hate how much it's been reduced in comparison to its predecessors. That plus I simply dislike much of the landscape. Beyond the Riften surroundings and the Whiterun tundra there aren't a lot of areas that I really enjoy being in. A lot of people that I've spoken to seem to like Oblivion the least, due in part to that game's "generic" cosmopolitan atmosphere and traditional fantasy landscape. I actually enjoyed both of those elements and find Skyrim to be the (relatively) dull and unappealing one.

Oh wow, that's cool. Indiana legalized gay marriage before the countrywide law last summer? I could never remember which states were cool with it and which ones weren't. My nearby home state of Wisconsin didn't allow it at least as of 2006 (that's when my girlfriend and I voted for it, but the yays were slightly outweighed by the nays) but that was about the last that I knew before it was legally recognized everywhere. Chris Slate moved to Nintendo Power? Oh wow, that almost makes me wish that I'd picked the magazine back up in the 2000s. Bill Donahue too - I remember him being at, I think, Game Player's back in the mid 90s (where he worked with the other Chris, Chris Gore). Good times.

Ohhhhhh, okay. No, I haven't gone too deep into the archives so that helps things to make a lot more sense. Well belated congratulations on your wedding then! Boobs FTW!!! When did PSM actually end? Did you follow it that long? I never really followed system-specific magazines after that so I don't know exactly what happened next but as far as I could tell the magazine folder and then a different one (simply called Playstation, or Playstation Magazine) eventually showed up in its place. I'm probably wrong about the details.

Which would make perfect sense. For me, because I grew up as so much of a console gamer and had relatively little experience with computers, the feelings are almost in reverse: I love the fun experiences that gaming systems have provided me over the years and look back at them with great affection and warm nostalgia (hence the podcast, after all), but spent most of my young life with the impression of computer games as this vast, mystical, forbidden other world of complexity and maturity. I had all kinds of exposure to that world in the form of reviews and ads and photos in the gaming mags that I used to read, and I'd often look at their amazing graphics and intriguing concepts and lament the fact that I could never play them. Because these classic computer games fostered such a sense of unsatiated curiosity and excitement, I've grown up to continue looking at them with feelings of reverence.

I think that's a good summary of the Ed and Martin days. All eras of EGM had enthusiasm, but there was a sense of childlike wonderment to the first crew. I think it's because the industry was expanding, new things (such as CES) were being introduced, and the guys at the magazine were generally just having lots of fun. Later EGM...Idunno. I have to make the frat boy comparison again. It just seemed like they displayed more entitlement and cynicism. Probably the best example of the fun enthusiasm of early EGM that I can remember was when, in the little self-introductions that the crew would open each issue with, Ed's box read something like "Old Ed is getting used to married life but he misses those greasy nights of pizza and Super Mario 3". Ahh, right, Paris-san. I remember now. I'd also forgotten that Chibi-Chan was called Banzai. The mascot wound up kind of usurping Bill? Did he start disappearing entirely? Wait, we're going to get along fine because I'm an insatiable boob fiend? Is that because you too are a fellow boob fiend? But you're a female right? So wait...does that mean that we're going to get along so well because you yourself have stupendous boobs? Lol maybe I shouldn't try to question any of this..

Meanwhile Final Fantasy is on game number XVIIMMXXI - 2: Sinfonietta of the Hypnogagic Profundity.

Ah see, Morrowind was my first but yep, I hear that Arena and Daggerfall are even more involved and that Daggerfalll's landmass is somewhere around the size of Great Britain (comprised of a bunch of identical tiles and indistinguishable towns but still, that's quite a feat). You must HATE Skyrim then, with its lame-ass 17 skills, enemy scaling and "put points into being whatever you want whenever you want" skill system.

Yeah, sadly graphic adventure / point and click games are kind of a dead genre these days. I listened to an interview with Ron Gilbert a few months ago and in it he laments the fact that the game industry (or perhaps audience) seems to have grown past them. Which is a shame because they were a lot of fun. Heh it's funny that you mention your dislike of Ultima. First, because that's actually a series that I was going to specifically describe when talking about not judging modern games against ones that were limited by technology (in this case the NES version of Ultima III versus the computer version of the same). Second, I actually have a tattoo of the stylized ankh made popular in the game's fourth volume. I'm definitely a fan (the fourth game in particular introduced a morality system that, while very simplistic by today's standards, was actually a pretty novel and compelling concept) but I definitely understand why you'd have trouble getting into the series. The interface IS clunky and the dialogue system tedious. It's the kind of thing that I guess a person would be more likely to enjoy if they first played the games when they were new and hadn't yet been surpassed by advancements in technology. While never much of a computer gamer until the last 15 years or so, I have somewhat similar thoughts regarding the accessibility levels between PC and console games. In particular Morrowind, the third game in the Elder Scrolls series. That game provided the bare minimum of a tutorial - how to interact with objects, access your menus, use a lockpick and...well actually that's just about it - before literally closing the door behind you and leaving you free to figure out what to do and where to go in its massive world. It told you where you could go to begin a quest but it was completely up to you to figure out the world. Is that thing over there hostile? Oh shit, I guess it is and now I'm dead. What happens if I steal this sword from the merchant's table? Uh oh, I'm being chased by guards. How do I learn spells and make money in this game? Guess I better find one of the towns and ask around. What's the difference between these various political factions? I suppose I need to join up with one and find out. The game was prettty hardcore, it dropped you into its world and said "Best of luck". Skyrim, on the other hand (and as I complained in another thread) has dumbed down the experience considerably due to the series' increasing popularity with mainstream console players. Now the series is providing tutorial sequences that are twenty minutes long and tell you how to do everything but walk while convenient markers appear on your map to show you exactly where to go next. In Morrowind there was a complex leveling system that required proper prioritization of skill brackets to efficiently complement your character's chosen attributes whereas in Skyrim you just throw your points into whatever abilities you want. In the previous game you find the secretive thieves' guild by bribing NPCs for information and tracking down members who meet at a specific hour of the night. In Skyrim the leader of the thieves' guild literally walks right up to you- locking you into unavoidable dialogue with him- and spells out exactly what the guild is and how you can join. The point I'm trying to make with all of these comparisons is that you're right: Morrowind, which seemed to pride itself on its inhospitable world and general indifference to player bewilderment, felt like the hardcore PC experience that it is while Skyrim gives itself away as a mass-market console hit by being straightforward and easily accessible. Even as a predominantly console-based gamer I believe that there's a charm to the more involving PC games that's slowly being lost.

Eh, I've known the guy for 30 years so I can't get too mad at him. I think it was just tough for him to play a game that, by today's standards, is kind of clunky and slow. Same with the music - having not played the computer versions he didn't have the knowledge or perspective to realize how much of a step up the Sega CD version was. Neither of us did, all I could do was guess. Glad to know that I was correct about that. I can see how the relentless bashing that your PC games received would be really frustrating. It's always a bummer to hear someone knock something that you love. In a situation like that, in order to really do your job as a reviewer, you can't judge a port using the same criteria that you judge games that are specifically made for the superior system. The right thing to do is say "Okay, this port wasn't optimized, I'm going to factor the limitations of its native machine into my review". They make a lot of derogatory comments about the puerile, unsophisticated sense of American humor? The same people who gave the world AbFab?

Lol yeah, Howard had a pretty miserable time playing Monkey Island. He references it several more times in subsequent episodes. I guess that the game was just not his style at all. While playing through it again I didn't love it quite as much as I did the first few times back in my teenage years (as you heard, I realized that the last section of the game was kind of a drag), but it's still always going to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was sad that Howard didn't like it but we both agreed that it made for an interesting contrast for the episode. You're right, we definitely weren't early PC players. My first exposure to computers was at the local library in about 1984, where I played titles like Zork and Stickybear Reading on their Apple IIe. A few years later I befriended a kid in school who had his own Apple IIe (or at least the family did) and it was there that I experienced Maniac Mansion for the first time. I'll save the details of that one for whenever we get around to a Maniac Mansion episode but suffice to say the game blew my mind, totally immersed me and made me realize just how much potential PC games had. Beyond that early Apple IIe exposure, I didn't get my own computer until 1993 and even then I didn't use it for games, I just used it for art and writing. As for Howard, I don't think he had any real computer exposure at all as a kid. So yeah, we're lifelong hardcore gamers since the days of the Atari 2600. But early PC gaming? No, we're definitely not that experienced. Your details about the Monkey Island differences are pretty fascinating, it would have been cool to have someone on the show with your perspective to round everything out. To be fair Howard was the one who was really beating hard on the lack of music (I hope he's the one who used the word "inexcusable", I'd kick myself if it was me). You know what, I actually really dig the IBM version of the soundtrack that you linked me to. It's actually kind of an impressive rendition, at least based on my strict familiarity with the Sega CD version. I can see though how someone who grew up with it, and then heard someone complaining about the superior version, would roll their eyes. The benefits of being old, eh? Yeah the lack of more episodes on Youtube is actually entirely my fault. I could easily just upload all the episodes there (and to be honest I think that maybe I should just do that) but I really liked adding pictures throughout the video that correspond to what we're talking about. The thing is, that takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort (half the time the pictures get out of sync once Youtube processes the clip) so it became kind of a chore. I always intended to get around to it, but I think I mentally gave up on it long ago. Again, I think I'll probably just wind up posting everything to Youtube as is. The last episode that we produced was TMNT: Turtles in Time (arcade) but during the fall we both got busy and it just kind of fell by the wayside. We intend to get back in gear as soon as that one's finished and uploaded though. So yes, at the moment, Punch-Out should be the last one that's on itunes. It's episode 8 or so, I believe. Sorry that you found some of the Monkey Island stuff frustrating. I've definitely been there, listening to people talk about something that I have useful knowledge of but can't add. Hopefully it doesn't deter you from the rest of the episodes. So far that's the most sour that Howard has gotten.

A lot of people seem to have gotten rid of their gaming magazines so you're not alone. I don't know why I was different but I always kept mine. Kind of a pack rat I guess. I did draw on my earliest ones though, so they're not really of much value these days. What was it about that issue of EGM that made it your first purchase? Game Player's was a decent magazine for its day. Primitive and simplistic, but they have a certain charm. I'm pretty sure that this was my first gaming magazine as well. While I didn't have that specific issue, I had a couple of the Nintendo Buyer's guides or whatever they were (one of them has the face of a knight on the cover, I'm sure of that much). I didn't buy them though, I received them for Christmas of 1989. Hey, I was 11 then as well, another similarity..... ....are you me?

I occasionally scroll through a physical copy of one of my old Nintendo Powers or EGMs, just to feel nostalgic, but the convenience (and massive storage space) of my tablet makes digital reading a lot of fun. I have a Nook Color from Barnes and Noble, chosen specifically because of how easy it is to hack and because ebooks can be side-loaded (through SD card). Once I hacked it it stripped away the B&N architecture leaving Android technology at its base, allowing me to stock it with a few different e-reader apps (Aldiko and Moon + seem to be the two best). I threw in a 32 gb SD card and now have every available copy of Nintendo Power, EGM, Gamepro, Game Player's, and Gamepro (as well as a couple hundred books) at my disposal in one convenient location. One of the best purchases I ever made. I convert the CBR files into PDFs before I load them though since I cannot stand reading ebooks and mags in that format.

There we go. That's what more JRPGs need.

See I actually liked the early Hsu era of EGM, but that's probably due more to my overall excitement about the industry at that time (as well as my overall enjoyment of life. I had a good girlfriend during those years. She later became a stripper. Story for another time). But yeah I can see that you came away sensing the same jerky attitude of EGM that I did. In the old days, when the magazine was put together by guys like Martin Alessi and Ed Semrad there seemed to be a less aggressive tone. Their writing was poorer but they seemed more professional overall, they simply didn't seem to have the attitude that came with the Hsu crew. By the early 2000s I began to notice that EGM projected a vibe of self-assurance, or perhaps even cockiness, running throughout every issue. It was a slow process but that helped to sour me on the magazine. Plus I just hated how John Riccardi looked. I don't know how to explain it, I just wanted to smack that kid. PSM, by contrast, seemed to have a confidence that was more casual and accessible. They didn't have swelled heads or strike me as elitists. They were just passionate fans having fun, and I liked that. Chris Slate was great, I liked that guy. I also liked the Japanese correspondent (can't remember his name, unfortunately). I even liked their silly mascot Chibi-Chan. I liked just about everything about PSM, truth be told. I thought that it was a fine magazine. I wish there were more here in the database (I have every one of the first 50 issues or so, minus number 1, and I constantly struggle with whether I should donate them. Sacrifice my prized collection for convenient digital preservation and the enjoyment of my fellow retro gaming fans? It's incredibly tempting, but it's hard to want to part with them). J. Scott Campbell does lean towards the top-heavy, and even though I'm an insatiable boob fiend even I don't need to see giant jugs everywhere. I find the small just as attractive as the large, so when I see someone throwing beach balls onto every female it gets kind of tiresome and seems a bit immature. Still, I love the almost sketchy look of the girls that he draws, and find myself primarily a fan of the faces. My god, the man draws such beautiful faces. He creates spunky personality with nothing more than a nose, a mouth, and a pair of eyes. I mean how could a man not fall in love with this? I'll give this to you though, that is one fine looking pencil-rendered jacket. Great light reflection on the leather. Ha, I had the EXACT same experience. I remembered thinking that his Nintendo Power game concept - "Lockarm" - seemed incredibly ambitious and creative and I couldn't wait for it to get made. It never did, so I forgot about both the name and the kid who'd come up with it. Then years later, after becoming familiar with Campbell by falling in love with his work in Danger Girl, I happened to be going back through the old issues of NP and did a literal double-take when I read his name. It was kind of amazing to connect my childhood memories of thinking about his game concept to my familiarity with his artwork years later as an adult. Apparently in issue 200 he came back to the magazine for a retrospective. I'd love to get my hands on that issue and read his article.

This pretty much mirrors my own life. As a kid it was Game Player's and Nintendo Fun Club News, which soon morphed into Nintendo Power (which, to a kid, was pure uncut magazine cocaine). I adored the hell out of that mag until around 1992-3 when I became more interested in EGM. I don't really know what made me make the switch, I think I just liked EGM's relatively more adult tone and review structure. It didn't hurt that by this time I had multiple systems, not just a NES. EGM remained my favorite magazine for years, especially in the late 90s and 2000, but then PSM came along at around the same time. While I never saw the first issue I happened to spot the second one at a grocery store and, being a huge fan of Castlevania, bought it for the Symphony of the Night cover story. I was quickly impressed by the magazine's clean, colorful layout, rebellious sense of independence (tempered by a genuine love for the Playstation), and amazing pack-ins like stickers for the Playstation lid and memory cards. I quickly subscribed to PSM and stuck with it until around 2001, when I again had acquired too many systems to stick to a magazine devoted to a single one. But man, I loved PSM. Their content had just the right tone of friendliness and enthusiasm, and you're right - the cover and interior art was often astounding. J. Scott Campbell, one of my favorites (and the best at capturing the beauty of the female, in my opinion) did several pieces for them. I didn't read any mags from around 2002-2005 but then I started getting back into EGM again, eventually subscribing. Soon, however, I would realize that I didn't like the magazine nearly as much as I used to. Much of the staff had changed and I didn't care for the snotty frat boy attitude that they often displayed, most commonly in snarky responses to reader letters. I didn't like their changing review style. And, especially around 2006-2007, I didn't like how thin the magazine became. Long gone were the days of 300 page behemoths, at this point an issue of EGM would frequently top out at around 100 pages (sometimes failing to crack even that), roughly 30-40 percent of those pages being ads. Throughout the 80s and 90s Gamepro was always kind of a constant second or third place choice. I liked it, but it was never my favorite.

Thanks a lot kitsunebi! Really glad that you liked it. We're enthusiastic, passionate fans, but we never know how interesting our conversations will be to other people. It's nice to hear that you guys are enjoying it. I love old graphic adventure games, cutting my teeth on Maniac Mansion for the Apple IIe. Never played most of the Sierra games (I simply didn't own my own computer during the heyday of those games) but they always looked like fun. The Secret of Monkey Island was something of a quest for me as a kid, one of the things that had the most influence on my desire to get a PC. But then it came out on the Sega CD instead, and I was sold. I bought the system JUST for that game (got some others too, of course, but Monkey Island drove the purchase). Whether I felt that it holds up to my fond childhood memories of it, and whether my cohost Howard dug it as much as I did, I'll let you find out. I'll just say that the results are "interesting". Throw up while listening to our podcast! Multi-task!

Yep, it was actually released. It's considered one of the worst games of all time. One look at the cover should tell you how much effort they put into making the game good. I've heard almost nothing but negativity regarding Fighting Force, but I was actually pretty interested in it before release. I still like the concept (kind of like a very early version of The Warriors - not the movie, the gameplay of the game), it just got too many wretched reviews for me to want to give it a shot. You know? I've actually never played Streets of Rage to this day. On the other end of the spectrum, I've heard nothing but good things about that one.

Areala's right, it seems that neither of the other choices are optimal because both lead to confusion. I keep going back and forth as to what I should number the magazines on my ebook reader: On the one hand it bugs me to think of having several dozen issues that are numbered incorrectly in the list. On the other hand it would also bug me to just have an unaccountable gap between issue 80 and 91. I hadn't even realized that this was a thing until I went through a bunch of headache trying to figure out how I'd mislabeled a bunch of my downloads and what happened to the ones that were suddenly missing. Your idea would make things more clear and eliminate potential frustration for future downloaders, but at the same time I understand why Philly and E-Day made the choice that they did. That must have been an irritating issue to have to deal with. I think the best possible solution to all of this is to go back in time and punch Gamepro right in the face.

Hey, thanks a lot! I'm happy that you really enjoyed it, and glad to finally get some feedback on this. After that first episode we actually do start getting a little more personal - for example rather than rattling off movies that came out in a particular year we each choose one that's of particular interest to us and talk about it, sometimes telling stories of our first exposure to it as kids. The games sometimes get a bit of that as well, for example I think that the Monkey Island episode features a nostalgic tale of discovering the game in my youth. In Punch-Out Howard and I talk about how far we were able to get into the game as kids and which characters used to cause us trouble. The Street Fighter II episode in particular has us each describing the first time that we saw the game, our early experiences with it, and comparisons of how we feel about each character now versus how we felt about them back in the day. Coincidentally I told a lengthy story in that very episode that we chose to cut because it pertains more to Mortal Kombat, a series that we're going to have a LOT of anecdotes about. It was actually something of a conscious choice not to talk too much about personal stories. We're all about general nostalgia and we definitely throw in lots of little memories as the conversation flows but there's always been a little hesitation about going into great length or depth. The reason for that is pretty straightforward: We just figured that people wouldn't be interested in that and would quit listening to the show if we did. We're still really small time so we haven't gotten a whole lot of open feedback. What we have heard has been pretty much nothing but positive enthusiasm, and that's always great, of course (it really is, since we don't want to suck). But it's nice to hear comments about what someone specifically likes or doesn't like or would enjoy hearing more of. Your input is really appreciated and when we finally get things running again I'll be sure to keep it in mind whenever I'm worried that I might bore the listeners. Check out some more of our shows, we got more into the flow of things as we went along and I think that as our comfort level increased so did the level of our personal reflections. Thanks a lot for listening!

He did. It was an excellent episode in that it lovingly described the nostalgia of the first few games in the series and the absolute frustration of Mythology's terrible controls and cheap level design. The other game with Jax and Sonya is called Mortal Kombat: Special Forces and is supposed to be even worse. I've read in the past that MK co-creator John Tobias left the franchise over his problems with that game, but I don't know if it's actually true.

Really? I guess I need to touch up on my exploration skills. The explanation regarding this site's numbering choice does make sense, since you're right - either way results in confusion and one might as well place the blame where it lies, which does seem to be with Gamepro. If there was a ten month gap, do you know when it occurred? I've been skimming around the various issues and they seem to be consistent from one month to the next, leading me to wonder if Gamepro made an even dumber mistake: getting their count wrong and never realizing it. Sure makes that issue 100 (90) celebration kind of lame.