Saturday, 9:00 PM (New Media Track) Chesapeake, Everything Old Is New Again: Now grandma and baby can both love Battlestar, If Hot Topic weren’t proof enough, all the stuff that’s old is new. Power Rangers, Doctor Who and many anime and science fiction shows aimed at younger audiences still keep their followings as they grow up. We explore favorite franchises and how much better they’ve aged than their fanbase.

Sunday, 12:00 Noon (New Media Track) Derby Room, Lovecraft Mythos Cagefight: Who Would Win in a Fight? Moderator Norm Sherman Cthulhu vs. Dagon? Yog-Sothoth vs. Shub-Niggurath? Would the match be a TKO or won on points?

Sunday 3:00 PM (Gaming Track) Parlor 1041, Creating Aliens and Their Culture, Moderator Kory Kease – One of the most exciting elements of a campaign, game world, science fiction/fantasy series (book TV, etc.) is the adventure of meeting and discovering new cultures that

Sunday 4:00 PM (Readers Track) Belmont Room, The Heinlein Panel – Moderator David J. Williams – How much math do people really need to know in our Age of Computers? Should we really have to solve a quadratic equation to be eligible to vote? How necessary is it to know calculus nowadays? Is there value in learning math beyond the solving of such problems?

Looks like there’s a little something for everyone there and I’m looking forward to every one of them.

In addition, I’ll be trying to attend all of Mur Lafferty’s events, and John Cmar’s events, and Command Line, and Jared Axelrod, and J.R. Blackwell… and… and…

Somewhere in there I need to sleep, too. Whew.

In old RPG news, we have a few items. First, there’s the concluding articles to Ken Denmead’s Top 10 D&D Modules series: #7 Finale. I approve of both choices (but still no Barrier Peaks?).

Second, Allen Varney (no roleplaying slouch himself) has an interview over at the Escapist with Marc Miller, creator of Traveller.

The retro videogaming department is busy this week. For recent homages, we have Greg Costikyan at Play This Thing! with a review of a Japanese rogue-like and Z over at GeekDad with a review of a NES/SNES clone. For the latter, I’m glad Mur has her old SNES — this thing sounds like a cheap knockoff.

In nods to the past, Marc Cerny, creator of Marble Madness and contributor to many a Naughty Dog and Insomniac game (disclosure: I work for Insomniac Games) has been inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame. And around the same time Marble Madness came out, there was Starflight, one of the most complex games of its time. Erin Hoffman at the Escapist covers the story of its development.

Finally, a rather interesting story about how partnerships can go awry. Apparently, Konami, the creators of Yu-Gi-Oh, discovered that someone was creating bootleg cards, thereby both profiting from their creation and polluting the market with counterfeits. Little did they suspect that someone was their partner, Upper Deck… Cult-Stuff has all the details.

Long time listeners will remember my very early review of M.U.L.E. Well, there’s another version out there, this time at http://www.planetmule.com/. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it looks like there are clients for Windows, Mac and Linux, and eventually Debian. You do register with the site, but I don’t think they have a central matchmaking server, as they mention using the forum for that. The one strike against them is they credit Dan Bunten, not Danielle Bunten, against her wishes, but it’s probably worth taking a look if you’re a M.U.L.E. fan.

In more D&D related content, we have a repeat of a series at GeekDad, where Ken Denmead reviews the Top Ten D&D modules he found while cleaning up his storage shed. I don’t see Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but otherwise looks to be a good list of classics: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

In another GeekDad post (I need to get out more), Michael Harrison interviews Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a memoir/rediscovery of the geek life. Plus, until January 13 (Wednesday), you can enter a contest to win a copy of the book. See the article for more details.

Finally, yesterday Terry Cavanagh’s retro platformer VVVVVV was released. I tried out the demo and it’s definitely worth it. It’s challenging and fun, and has a very nifty mechanic where you can switch the “floor” to either the top or the bottom of the screen. For a fuller review, check out this one by Anthony Burch on Destructoid.

First, James Maliszewski has a nice little article up at The Escapist, entitled “Founding Fathers.” In it, he covers the history of wargames, from von Riesswitz’s Kriegspiel to David Wesley’s Braunstein (the progenitor of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign).

Related to this is Monte Cook’s most recent article at the aforementioned The Escapist magazine about the original supplements to D&D record the evolution of the rules. This is a follow-up to his previous post on D&D, already covered here.

Second, Greg Costikyan talks about the background for his new board game, Megacorps, and how he inadvertently created a future history through game design.

Greg also has a review of the Civil War tabletop game A House Divided (designed by Frank Chadwick in 1981). I haven’t played this one, but based on Greg’s review I think I’ll give it a shot as I’m a huge Civil War (or the “recent unpleasantness”) buff.

Finally, on the video gaming front, Nathan Barry on Geekdad reports that Tatio has released a remake of Arkanoid for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Many are the hours I spent playing Arkanoid on my Mac SE — as it was pirated, perhaps I should purchase a copy to balance the books. And you should too, because it’s tons of fun.

Hope your holiday season was a good one and you got to play lots of games! And if not, you’ve got a whole year ahead so get to it…

As a side note, they mention both the Magnavox Odyssey — as the first game console — and Simon — as a game that will survive the ages. The importance of these games isn’t a coincidence. They were both designed by The Father of Video Games Ralph H. Baer.

Link

I’ll be purchasing my own copy tonight and I’ll try not to let it delay the next show any more than it already is.

Now if they’d only bring back The Neverhood — that game was awesome. I still have the soundtrack that I picked up at E3 one year. Digging around, I see there are also plans to make it into a feature film, which would be interesting. Given Doug TenNapel’s connections, perhaps Frederator will be working on Earthworm Jim as well?

Oh, it’s an ad for a car, you say? Too bad. I would have played it.

You can find my half.com store here. Right now it’s mostly Xbox, PS2 and Xbox 360 games with one Wii title. I’ll be listing some PS3 games tonight, and I may have some PC games as well later.

The reason this came to mind is that because there is an interview up on Wired with Yoshiaki Koizumi, the director of Super Mario Galaxy. In it, he implies that he’s more involved in the story aspects of the Mario games than Miyazaki is — which is ironic given the focus on Miyazaki in the Discovery program as the father of story games…

I also apparently missed the fact that you can play it on your cell phone, via the current rights holder, SuperHappyFunFun. Hence the discussions to publish the new Mac version. Hopefully they can work all that out and we’ll see Return to Dark Castle soon.

• Apologies for long hiatus
• News about reprints and rereleases, especially Cosmic Encounter and Titan
• Get yourself a Geeklabel T-shirt!
• Interview with Eric Goldberg
• Listen to Midnight’s Lair!
• What’s up with me
• Closing

Links:

• Junta (board game)
• Highway to the Reich (wargame)
• War of the Ring (wargame)
• Descent on Crete (wargame)
• John Carter: Warlord of Mars (?)
• Swords & Sorcery (wargame)
• Commando (wargame)
• DragonQuest (RPG)
• Imperium Romanum (wargame)
• Campaigns of Napoleon (wargame)
• The Compleat Enchanter (reference to book)
• Paranoia (RPG)
• Mongoose’s Paranoia Page
• Star Wars RPG
• Tales of the Arabian Nights (board game)
• Air Cav (wargame)
• Crossover Technologies (from 3D Gamers site)
• MadMaze
• Tom Peter’s Business School in a Box
• Article on Unplugged Games

Final thoughts:

Another big thank you to Eric Goldberg for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me.

• Apologies for long hiatus
• Now a member of the Gaming Podcast Network!
• Politika games have finally shipped
• Game Developer’s Conference update and upcoming interviews
• Listen to Groovy Gamers Groovecast!
• Interview with Greg Costikyan
• Attend the UK Games Expo!
• Feedback
• Closing

Links:

• Supercharge (wargame)
• Swords & Sorcery (wargame)
• The Creature That Ate Sheboygan (wargame)
• SPI Died For Your Sins (article)
• Bug-Eyed Monsters (wargame)
• Toon (RPG)
• Paranoia (RPG)
• Mongoose’s Paranoia Page
• Star Wars RPG
• The Willow Game (board game)
• Crossover Technologies (from 3D Gamers site)
• MadMaze
• Article on Unplugged Games
• Violence: the roleplaying game of egregious and repulsive bloodshed
• Gaming Needs an Indy Label (originally published in Game Developer)
• The Scratchware Manifesto
• GDC 2005 Rant
• GDC 2007 Maverick Award acceptance speech

Final thoughts:

A big thank you to Greg Costikyan for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me.

Despite my earlier and unfounded skepticism, Matt Barton of the blog Armchair Arcade has posted the second of a series about the origins and history of the computer RPG. It’s currently up on Gamasutra, but he’ll be posting it on his own blog in a few weeks.

This installment features games from the time period that he calls the Golden Age of CRPGs: 1984-1993.

As someone who wrote a basic RPG for his Zenith computer out of frustration (not a lot of games for that platform) I found this pretty fascinating. I’m looking forward to the next few installments, assuming that he gets to them.

(Yes, this is from last month — still catching up).

I also give the final winners of the Politika games, and talk about some recent appearances on other shows.

Show Notes:

• It’s official: The show is vintage
• Appearances on Gaming Uncensored and Michael and Evo’s Wingin’ It.
• Life changes
• Listen to Gaming Uncensored!
• Description of The Fool’s Errand
• Description of At the Carnival
• Description of 3 in Three
• Brief coverage of the Philips CD-i games
• Where to get these lovely games
• Coming up: The Fool and His Money
• Attend the UK Games Expo!
• Who gets the Politika games?
• Closing

Links:

• Cliff Johnson’s main page (click on the pictures at the top to navigate)
• The Fool’s Errand (Wikipedia)
• At the Carnival (Wikipedia)
• 3 in Three (Wikipedia)
• Pre-order The Fool and His Money
• Cliff Johnson’s work on Laff in the Dark monsters

Final thoughts:

As I was focusing primarily on the computer games, I inadvertantly forgot a few elements of Cliff Johnson’s recent career. After the Philips games wrapped up, he was a consultant to Disney Online, and designed the $100,000 puzzle for David Blaine’s book The Mysterious Stranger.

I also talk a little bit about the Politika pair of shows, and the continuing Politika board game giveaway. Yes, I managed to get one, maybe two, additional copies. So if you’re interested, drop me a line by Dec 31.

Show Notes:

• It’s offical: I’m vintage
• Merry Christmas and very sickness
• Happy Hannukah
• Politika giveaway update
• Listen to Pulp Gamer!
• Game description
• Components
• Gameplay for 1, 2, or more players
• James Ernest is a big fan (well, he did a bumper)!
• Bad stuff #3: Long turns and number of players
• Strategy and general thoughts
• Expansions and other Sleuth Publications games
• The multimedia version
• Listen to Villian Talk!
• Feedback on the Politika shows
• Closing

Links:

• Main BGG entry
• The Mansion Murders
• The Queen’s Park Affair
• Adventures by Gaslight
• West End Adventures
• Gumshoe
• The Chinatown Caper
• Jack the Ripper
• FMV game…
• and sequel
• DVD release

Final thoughts:

Dang it, my original research showed that the FMV version came out as a PC game first, but there it is on Wikipedia: it was released on Sega Genesis (via Sega CD) first. My apologies.

• Thanksgiving not fun when sick
• Listen to Tracy and Laura Hickman’s Dragonhearth!
• Game description
• Bad stuff #1: Combat model
• Bad stuff #2: Random placement and zero-sum game
• Bad stuff #3: Long turns and number of players
• Bad stuff #4: Components
• Bad stuff #5: Special abilities
• Bad stuff #6: Playtesting
• Listen to Game Addict Hotline!
• Contact me for free Politika stuff
• Closing

Links:

• Red Storm Politika site
• BGG entry
• Greg Schloesser’s review

Final thoughts:

One thing I didn’t make clear is that the giveaway is for the Politika boardgame. I also have copies of the computer game, but they might be hard to get running on today’s systems. Still, if you want ‘em…

• Happy Anniversary to Red Storm Entertainment!
• Listen to After Serenity!
• Game description
• Good stuff #1: In-depth research
• Good stuff #2: Production model
• Good stuff #3: Movement
• Good stuff #4: Shared power
• Good stuff #5: The board
• Good stuff #6: The people
• Listen to All Games Considered!
• Feedback and corrections on Show #23
• 54-40 Orphyte (Black Morn Manor source)
• Closing

Links:

• Red Storm Politika site
• BGG entry
• Greg Schloesser’s review
• Russia Today
• Russia 2010

Final thoughts:

Audacity is free, and at times acts like it. Due to its lovely save “feature,” the original high-quality audio for this show is gone, so what you hear is what you get. Also some of this was recorded first thing in the morning, so that’s why the audio does a bit of a switch from clear to somewhat growly early on.

• Intro
• Hello to all the people I saw at Balticon (Geek Fu Action Grip, Random Signal, Escape Pod, The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy, The Voice of Free Planet X, Voices of Tomorrow, Requiem of the Outcast, The Balticon Podcast)
• The cast of Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman.
• Look for Paul Tevis, Tom Vasel and Joe Steadman and me at Origins
• Participate in a podcasting panel at Dragon*Con!
• Game history and description
• Strategy
• Session Report and Review
• Listener Feedback
• Next time… not sure.

M.U.L.E. Links:

• Wikipedia entry
• World of M.U.L.E.
• Atari MULE Online!
• Dani Bunten Berry Memorial
• Salon article on Dani Bunten (registration/ad required)
• Space HoRSE (M.U.L.E. clone)
• L.L.A.M.A. (web published board game adaptation)
• Q.U.L.E. (another web published board game adaptation)

Final Thoughts:

One correction: I stated that Dani Bunten gave a keynote speech at CGDC 1997 — it was actually a lecture in 1997. However, she received a lifetime achievement award in 1998 and was gone a few months later. I had an opportunity to go to that CGDC — I should have taken it.

Another correction: I also stated that she might be pleased with the fact that you can play via emulators. Given that neither she nor her heirs see a dime from that, probably not. I also read that one major reason she wanted to republish M.U.L.E. was to update the graphics (Sega wanted to do it, but also wanted to add guns — she said no). So again, probably not. Still, it’s pretty much the only way to play these days, unfortunately.

Also, I believe I said that the auction interface was “wonky.” Upon consideration, it’s actually quite elegant, in that you can have a real-time auction amongst four players with a very simple interface. Trying to think about how you’d implement that in a face-to-face situation makes that quite clear…

• Intro, discussion of balancing description vs. analysis
• History and description of Dark Castle
• History and description of Beyond Dark Castle
• Reissues: Color Dark Castle and Return to Dark Castle
• Review and analysis: gameplay, sound and personality

Links:

• Wikipedia entry
• Delta Tao’s Dark Castle page
• ZSculpt’s Return to Dark Castle page
• Dark Castle walkthrough

Final Thoughts:

As usual, I have at least one correction: in looking up links I found a site which provides a walkthrough, and there are 14 levels in the original Dark Castle. Once I finish Beyond Dark Castle I’ll post the actual number of levels in that as well.