After having a couple of podcasts where we discussed the indie homebrew scene and ROM hacking, we decided to hone in on one magical source of nerd power known as Tomas Guinan who has delved into both of these worlds.
In this week’s special episode of The Vagabond Gamecast we conduct our very first interview! Can you smell that Nova Scotian musk yet? That’s right folks, today, we’ve got not one, not two, but THREE of Truro’s finest current/former citizens in your ears today. Tomas joins us for over an hour of chatting about his ongoing Kickstarter for the Eskimo Bob NES game.
Eskimo Bob for the NES is an arcade-style puzzle-platformer with 64 levels, 15 enemy types, two playable characters, two support characters, and a fully functional password system allowing you to save your progress the good old-fashioned way.
Come along as we discuss things such as:
- ・Who is Tomas Guinan?
- ・What is Eskimo Bob?
- ・What experience did he have before this project with game development?
- ・What was Tomas’ inspiration for starting this project?
- ・How long has it taken?
- ・How does one develop for the Nintendo Entertainment System?
- ・How does one go about making physical carts for the NES?
- ・ROM Hacking / Translating
- ・What’s it like to have a Kickstarter?
Let’s go!
Lots to talk about this time around everybody!
The hacker bug has bitten Stephen these days and he’s devoted some funds to a new computer purchase to feed his hobby. And thus sets up our discussion this time around about homebrew and independent development!
After a little catch-up chatter, we talk motivations for getting involved in a burgeoning development community and being part of that movement (in this case, VR) before lightly touching on some future projects in the works.
We contrast indie projects that look to create new experiences (again, VR) with those that recreate classic experiences (dev on older systems), which is a great segue into an introduction to a project Matt’s childhood neighbor and pal, Tomas Guinan currently has up on Kickstarter. It’s for an NES game he’s built based on a popular Newgrounds series of flash cartoons he created in the early 2000’s called “Eskimo Bob” that has hit its funding goal and is a great example of a successful retro game console-dev project.
We also spend a morsel of the ‘cast on the homebrew dev scene that includes GBA and PS1 dev tutorials out there, and Brian Provinciano’s classic console ports of Retro City Rampage.
Finally, Contra 4 (“Dual Spirits” in Japan) for Nintendo DS is impossi-hard and Matt can’t beat it, to his shame. Woo-hah
Hope you’ve got a great set of headphones to go along with this week’s gamecast! Today we’re sitting down to do a side-by-side audio comparison of the Famicom Disk System / Nintendo Entertainment System editions of the original Legend of Zelda thanks to the YouTube video that was put up by Clyde Madelin in support of his Legends of Localization, Book1: The Legend of Zelda.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole, if you’re interested in learning more about the audio hardware on these old consoles. Definitely an intersting world to delve into!
There’s nothing quite like curling up by a fire on a cold, cold, Canadian, winter night with a heartwarming book. Which is why it’s a shame that video game companies have given up on the practice of including fine literature with their titles. This week, our two heroes embark on a journey of nostalgia (what else is new) for the long lost days of instruction manuals that were ready and willing to bring us up to speed, and make us feel at home before launching us into hundreds of hours of electronic ecstacy.
No, but seriously, if you weren’t around in the early era of gaming (or even if you were!), do yourself a favour and go get your paws on some of those old papers that were filled with fun stories and artwork. Some of our favourites, which we mention in this podcast, include:
- Dragon Warrior IV
- Final Fantasy Tactics
- The Legend of Zelda
- Metroid
- Sim City
- Street Fighter II
- Super Mario Bros 3
Some other interesting things to check out is this talk on Gamasutra about how long it takes to get into Zelda games.
Also be sure to check out this analysis by Egoraptor on how Mega Man X teaches the player how the game works without relying on explicit dialogue.
There’s few people who would contest that great characters, a compelling story, and challenging puzzles make a game great, however sometimes it’s the little things that can make a game fun or tedious. In this week’s episode of The Vagabond Gamecast, Matt and Steve take some time to discuss some of what makes a great or poor inventory system. Our heroes cover some simple mechanics such as what was used in earlier platforming titles such as Adventure Island, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros 3, and Super Mario World to the more in-depth RPG sytems such as Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Suikoden. We talk about the over-encumberance featured in Skyrim vs the Tetris-like layout of systems in Ultima VII and Day Z and even the less approachable but flexible systems in text parsing games such as Quest for Glory.
So come on over, get un-encumbered, and let’s talk what’s in our inventories!
Sometimes our actual recording sessions get jumbled up and separated out over the course of a couple weeks as we get time to record them. They don’t quite align with publication time, meaning things can sometimes get a little out of sync.
No big deal; this time around, we mix things up and pause on the solid game topic discussion. Instead, we have a random chat about recent happenings in our lives as gamer parents with broad tastes but restricted schedules. Stephen touches on some recent gaming and a teaching project he has in the pipeline, and Matt has started a new job and is adjusting to the new daily routine (and trying to figure out where to shove in project time!).
Both muse over some recent film watches and how we’re sharing film and other cultural product with our kids, as well as how to best use the commutes we’ve had at our various jobs.
Tune in for a five minute chat on our topic of the week: what drives you to make a new console purchase? We’ve graciously wrapped this light discussion in some much more substantial general game chatter and game-related complaining. But- This is no lackadaisical padding! Stay tuned for some analysis of the games we’ve been playing (finishing even), and a discussion on Infocom-style adventure games/visual novels and other genres we haven’t seen utilized as of late.
We also touch on some of the frustrations inherent in retro games that have mostly disappeared from their modern counterparts, and delve into some other general nostalgia.
Have you ever been curious about the art side of video game development? Matt was! And so he ambushed Stephen with some questions about it! There are of course many different artistic roles in game development and this week Stephen shares some insights from his experience working in the game industry as a VFX artist as we go into interview-format to dig into where his professional career has taken him.
Some of the topics covered include:
* Interviewing for VFX jobs in games
* Tools used by game VFX artists
* VFX teams at game companies
* Hunting for VFX work in games in the US as a non-citizen
* What it was like to transition from film (Steve’s previous experience) to games
* The nature and challenges of the VFX role in games
This was our first stab at recording in the evening instead of the early morning with obvious differences. Not so much of the usual tired groaning and whining about poor kid sleep schedules.
Enjoy!
In this week we bring you back to the late 1990’s to share what it was like to live through the birth of competent emulators for Nintendo systems and experience a flourishing “romhacking” community responsible for the first available English-language versions of some relatively important games from the NES~SNES era.
We touch lightly on some of the technical aspects of game fan-translations and general hacking of video game ROMs, and generally focus on the experience of being involved in the community.
This is a particularly nostalgic period for Matt, who credits it with solidifying his interest in computer science and that kind of stuff, and for furthering his interest in the more technical aspects of games, game history, and game hardware.
As always, top all of that off with some griping about parenting (if that’s your thing) and you’ve got yourself a podcast episode!
Anyone reaching into the depths of gaming history has surely hit upon gemsters and junkness, and probably games that could really qualify as both. One perhaps need look no farther than the original Ultima 1 (later, “Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness”… yeah, “darkness” for sure) for a telling example. We’ve come a long way since the early 80s. Games like Donkey Kong and the original Mario Bros remain replayable and endearing classics, while some of the more ambitious and trendsetting titles have sadly long since been eclipsed by modern experiences.
It’s hard to really say that Ultima 1 is ‘bad’ with any semblance of objectivity; it’s actually quite easy to appreciate the things it accomplished and the path it paved for the computer RPG genre, and even its own eventual well-loved sequels. This time around, we discuss our impressions of this first Ultima (and to a lesser degree its predecessor, “Akalabeth”) viewed from a modern perspective. We’re both pretty sympathetic to its status as an important piece of gaming history, but neither of us are too fond of the game (despite playing the more accessible DOS remake from ’87!).
It seems the game has soured Ultima overall for Steve, who no longer even intends to play the entirety of his Ultima collection for the forseeable future. Matt’s characteristically more retro, and is more likely to hack his way through the series some day to get to Ultima V ~ VII, which both boss nerds agree look to be much more appealing games.
Any parents listening might appreciate our lead-in where we discuss integrating our kids into our busy / nerdy lives; any childless folks are probably better off skipping a good ten minutes or so to get to the meat of the matter: why Ultima I might just beat Tetris on Stephen’s list of much disliked games that are supposed to be good.