I apologize for not posting this before — I started watching this last week and it didn’t occur to me to bring it up here. Discovery is doing a five-part documentary about the computer game industry. They began with the early days, then last week covered the rise of Nintendo. Looks like this week covers first person shooters. It’s currently showing at 8pm ET/PT on Wednesday nights. Hopefully they’ll repeat it for those who missed it.

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…

According to a Geeklist on BGG.com, Z-Man games will be reprinting this classic game in 2008. If you recall, I discussed it back in Episode #28.

As far as other news: Yes, I’m still here, and the book I’m working on is almost through the worst of it. I’m hoping to be done with rewrites by the end of the month, and then it’s just copyediting and layout. Oh yeah, and coding for the CD — but that’s fun! In any case, there’s a good chance there will be an episode in December sometime.

Until then, thank you for all the cards and letters.

Apologies to those who downloaded those PDFs. I tried to update my copy of PodPress, and for whatever reason, that screwed up the feed. I’ve restored the old version and I’ll take another look at it when I have more time. Until then, let me know if you have any further problems.

Back from the abyss with an actual game review show. This time I talk about the darkly humorous game Nuclear War, designed by Doug Malewicki and published by Flying Buffalo, Inc. I also cover what’s been happening with me over the past few months, discuss some recent gaming news (vintage and otherwise), and talk about possibilities for future shows.
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I apparently missed this when I reported on Return to Dark Castle a few months ago. Joe Williams of Delta Tao published a link to the latest Mac demo on his blog. It’s got a few interface glitches (which may be due to the fact that I’m running under Rosetta) but it’s the old familiar feel.

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.

In addition to the podcasting panel, I had the honor and pleasure to participate in Geeklabel Radio #50, recorded at Origins. Along with the usual hosts — The Vicar, The Kingfish, and Billy Flynn — there was also my wife Mur Lafferty (of many podcasts), Victor from Fistful of Comics and Games, and Chris Miller and K.J. of The House of the Harping Monkey.

The Vicar and The Kingfish are great guys, you should really go buy a t-shirt…

It being the second year in a row, I now present the traditional recording of the gaming podcasters panel. The panel this year was organized by Scott Nicholson, and featured board game podcasters. Sorry about the delay on this — I used two recorders to get full coverage of the panel so there was some post-production involved.
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I had originally planned to do a show before Origins, but it looks like time is against me. So this post is to let you know that I’ll be at Origins this year, as usual. I expect to spend a fair amount of time in the Board Room, and probably wandering the show floor. Or you can go to the board game podcasters panel: it’s Saturday at 10am. Thanks to Scott Nicholson (Board Games with Scott) for organizing that.

For those who like swag, I’m bringing Vintage Gamer minibuttons — if you want one, you can either catch me or go by the podcasting booth in the exhibit hall.

And the kid will be with us, so if you run into Mur or I, you might meet the little princess as well…

After an even longer hiatus, I’m back — at least for the moment. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with another gaming luminary, Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies. We talked for forty-five minutes about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, boardgames and briefly about his later work in online and mobile games.
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