Passion For Pixels Retro Gaming Podcast

Remember dodging those laser beams on the Quickman level of Mega Man 2, working up a sweat trying to beat the underwater level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, running around in your underwear in Ghosts 'n Goblins, playing Battletoads in two player mode or pretty much any level of Ninja Gaiden? Classic games often have a high difficulty level because they were built to mimic arcade games, which needed players to lose lives frequently enough to make them keep shovelling quarters into the machine. This caused many a Nintendo NES and Sega Master System controller to go flying across the living room back in the day. We talk about our memories of incredibly difficult retro gaming moments, and how gaming has become a lot more accesible and less frustrating in modern times, but that part of the challenge has been lost in the process. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Faceb

We list our top three favourite games of all time. The only game to end up on two lists is Tetris - listen to find out which other classics made the cut! Also, Tyma is back (but he forgets to introduce himself). ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.

We talk about our favourite classic retro multiplayer games, from great hockey games like Blades of Steel, Ice Hockey and NHL 95 to Street Fighter II, Goldeneye for Nintendo 64 and of course the Nintendo NES Four Score four player favourites RC Pro Am II and Nintendo World Cup, plus lots more! ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.

We're taking some time off for Christmas, so this week we're rebroadcasting an old fan favourite, our episode on Japanese game director, producer, writer and designer Hideo Kojima. We talk about the games that inspired Kojima to become a game developer, his earliest work (ever heard of Penguin Adventure or Policenauts?) and how his most well known series of games, Metal Gear featuring Solid Snake, came about. Once again it's a story of how the limitations of the console's hardware forced the developers to think outside of the box, when the game was developed for the MSX2 and later the Nintendo NES. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Leave a comment below, tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

Japanese Role Playing Games (Japanese RPGs or JRPGs for short) used to be one of our favourite genres, but playing a JRPG today is like meeting that friend from 20 years ago who still lives at home with his parents. We try to figure out what made JRPGs especially appealing to us as teenagers, talk about what sets them apart from other RPGs, how crude graphics was a benefit for Tetsuya Nomura's Final Fantasy designs and how we still enjoy the beautiful soundtracks by Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda for games like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. We also look at how stuff gets lost in translation, both because of limitations in the ROM file, like the case was with Ted Woolsey's infamous Secret of Mana translation, but also in a more cultural way. Like what the hell is going on at the Honeybee Inn? ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the r

The holiday season is upon us and spearheading the charge of AAA titles vying for your gift-giving money is Star Wars: Battlefront. While reviews are suggesting that Battlefront may be a bit weak in the force, the Star Wars franchise has done pretty well over the years and has spawned some most impressive classics, like Star Wars for the NES, Super Star Wars for the SNES and Tie Fighter and Knights of the Old Republic for the PC. On this episode, Stian and Danny delve into the treasure trove of Star Wars games and pick their favourites. Did Yoda Stories make the list? No. No it did not. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Leave a comment below, tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.

From Mario to Mirror's Edge, platformers are one of gaming's oldest genres. Why have platformers enjoyed such longevity and what does the future hold for them? How did the prevalence of 3D graphics affect the genre? Mario 3 or Super Mario World?Stian and Danny try to answer all of these questions and more on the an episode dedicated entirely to the Def Leppard of gaming... what?!? ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE ON ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Leave a comment below, tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.

There are more superhero movies coming out than you can shake a stick at these days, but if you wanted to see superheroes on your TV screen back in the day, you had to pop in a videogame. Superheroes are overpowered, so how do you make a game that is both challenging and fun to play, while keeping it true to the source material? Superman games are notoriously bad, and this is because nothing hurts Superman, and that makes for a bad game. So what is it that makes some superhero games work, while others don't? We delve into this topic by looking at the classic Ninja Turtles games of the late 1980's and early 1990's, Batman for the NES and more modern Batman games, we look at how the aestethics of 8- and 16-bit games are closer to the still images of a comic book than modern games are, and we look at how Silver Surfer on the NES got it all wrong. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE ON ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion fo

Casual games have become huge the last few years, with Candy Crush Saga netting more than a billion daily plays in 2015, but casual games is not an invention of the mobile phone age. We look at casual gaming through our retro tinted lenses, and start with 1980's Pacman. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

We talk about our vivid memories of buying games back in the day when brick and mortar stores were the only option, and games didn't have a release date, so you'd have to come back again and again to see if a game was out yet. Tyma reveals why purchasing a japanese copy of Final Fantasy VIII was a bad idea, Danny tells of how he got ripped off purchasing his first ever game, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for the Sega Genesis, and Stian is crowned winner of first time videogame purchases, when he tells of his bundle of sweet classics purchased second hand 25 years ago. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

Expansion packs - the DLC of the 1990's. Danny, Stian and Tyma talk about their favourite expansion packs from back when games came in huge cardboard boxes. Topics include Blizzard's brilliant expansions, the horrible way of making expansions work on disc based consoles (with the worst one being Grand Theft Auto London for the Playstation) and the very first expansion pack. Also, Tyma gets to host (kind of). ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

We're hot off the heels of Square Enix' announcement at E3 2015 that they are remaking Final Fantasy VII, and we get into what we expect, hope and dread regarding the new version of one of the most beloved videogames of all time. How will the Honeybee Inn sequence play in HD, will Cloud still fight a jumping house and ride a dolphin and how will the combat system look? This and much more in this spoiler filled episode of Passion for Pixels (and clunky polygons). ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

Some games just can't be beat. No matter how frantically you try to clear the lines, those Tetris blocks WILL fill your screen. Your Sim City city will be struck by an earthquake. And your Lawnmover Simulator... well, listen and find out. Danny, Tyma and Stian talk about games with no end, games that can't be won and the nature of what makes a game a game. Is playing the lottery a game? At least one of our hosts think so. And one absolutely disagrees. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

Danny, Stian and Tyma try to figure out what happened to the beloved 80's genre of the shoot 'em up. What has taken it's place, and is there a possibility of seeing a shmup resurgence in the future? Even though it has no space ships, is Ikari Warrior's a shmup? Why can you not take bathroom breaks if you want to become the world champion at Life Force? This and more in episode 23 of Passion for Pixels. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

Is retro collecting all about reliving your childhood, is it a way to invest in stuff that's going to be worth a fortune down the line or is it hoarding mania? Tyma joins Danny and Stian to tell their stories of retro collecting, battered Nintendo's that still work, the feeling of finding a mint Castlevania Symphony of the Night at a yard sale and how awesome discovering a Legend of Mana US import in a Scandinavian store was before the advent of online shopping. Where is collecting going to be in a future of all digital downloads? Lastly Tyma realises that his passion for collecting music games has been explained in a poop related psychological theory by Sigmund Freud. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

Why do we celebrate film directors but can only name a handful of game developers? How does player agency shape character development in games? Why is Ben Affleck Passion for Pixel's paradigm celebrity? Stian and Danny try to answer these questions and more as we discuss the notion of fame in gaming. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

The music game genre has been around for almost 30 years, and in this episode we trace the genre from it's birth until today, along with our special guest Tyma. It all started with the NES title Dance Aeorobics and the obscure Famicom Disk System release Otocky, which we take some time to talk about. Following this was a hiatus of a few years before Parappa The Rapper became a huge success when it was released in 1997, and we talk about our memories of playing the game and the waves it made in the videogame press at the time. As Tyma puts it: "Parappa is the music game that every music game strives to be." We also devote some time to talking about Beatmania, an arcade series which has seen yearly releases for almost 20 years and cover some obscure titles like the terrible Stepping Selection for Playstation 2. You'll have to have an absurd love of karaoke to enjoy this particular title. Tyma makes a good argument for why the Game Boy Advance title Rhythm Heaven is the most important game ever made. If you want

Have you ever bought a game because the box art looks awesome? Hopefully not, but if you only use box art as your buying criteria you've probably played some pretty awful games. On this episode, Stian and Danny try to dissect the phenomenon of bad games that sell well. Also, we try to see why some amazing games never made bank. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

On this special episode, Danny and Stian welcome their first guest to the podcast! Tyma, a Neo Geo guru, covers everything from why the system has enjoyed such longevity to how to get into collecting and playing. Did you know that, despite its popularity, Metal Slug is actually one of the rarest titles to find? Also, Tyma counts down his top ten non-fighting Neo Geo games mixing some lesser known titles with outright classics. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.  

We're delving into an area that a lot of us don't know much about: the homebrewing scene. The homebrew scene contains everything from remakes and demakes of popular games, ports of old games from one system to another to brand new games for all consoles imaginable. Imagine getting your hands on a brand new NES game in 2015 - that's homebrewing for you. We touch upon all of this and more, and marvel at KHAN Games recently released port of Leisure Suit Larry for NES. ALL OUR EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN ITUNES! Subscribe to have our latest episode downloaded to your preferred device, and please leave us a review! Follow Passion for Pixels on Facebook to join the retro gaming discussion! Have an opinion? Tweet us @passion_pixels or send us an e-mail at passionforpixels@thesofaiswaiting.com.