Player One Podcast

This week! Voicemails, tweets and whatcha been playingses. In the first segment we cover a lot of ground, from favorite platformers and Sony’s new ad campaign to utter disappointment at Best Buy’s The Beatles Rock Band demo day. Games discussed during this 149th show include Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Uncharter, Shadow Complex, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Warriors Orochi 2 (PSP), Madden 10 and Peggle.

Beware potential spoilers for the first hour or so of Batman Arkham Asylum from 1:03:25-1:13:00.

And that, friends, is this week’s episode. Note, although this episode is called Diabolical Boxes, we barely talk about the sequel to ProfessorLayton that came out last week.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already! You can discuss this very episode right here.

Running time: 1:51:01

This week’s links:

PlayStation ads: It Only Does Everything

“Sweet Chip O’ Mine” by 486 at 8bitcollective

Direct download: 08_31_09-Episode149.mp3

Chris Johnston Episodes episode, podcast

This week two Gregs, a Phil and a CJ discuss many topics from the last week in gaming. Among them, the issues regarding the release of Shadow Complex, the slim PS3, PSP Mini games and more. Also, discussion on hot new game tapes like Splosion Man, Trials HD, Flipnote Studio, Dirt 2 and…there are a few others mixed in there I think.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already!

This week’s links:
Opinion: The Complex Question
Phil’s Flipnote Studio movie

Direct download: 08_24_09-Episode148.mp3

Chris Johnston Episodes episode, podcast

We’re a man down this week, and not talking about too much new stuff. Games discussed include Madden 10, The Bigs 2, Wii Sports Resort, Peggle, Hammerin’ Harry, Arkham Asylum, Splosion Man and Flipnote Studio, amongst others.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already!

Direct download: 08_17_09-Episode147.mp3

Chris Johnston Episodes episode, podcast

Many apologies for how long it’s taken to release another installment of my impossibly poorly conceived look at the Sega CD’s library. But read on, and you’ll understand why this latest post is so delayed.

The Sega CD brought a lot of promise with it. Not only did it open up the possibility of full-motion video playback in our games (the future!), real voice acting, and the much-celebrated hardware scaling and rotation that was already featured in the SNES — fairly early on us console gamers were promised that we would finally get to experience a lot of those great adventure games that had, up until that point, lived solely on the personal computer.

Understand, this was a pretty big deal to me. We didn’t have a computer in my house while I was growing up. And while I got to experience a lot of the Sierra games on my friend’s crappy, amber monochrome monitor from time to time, all that really did was make me pine for a chance to play more of these types of games.

Willy Beamish was one of the first PC ports to hit the Sega CD. It’s the story of a young, Bart Simpson-esque citizen of Frumpton whose summer vacation is spent pursuing childish activities like frog jumping contests and practicing for a big video game competition. In the meantime, he fights vampire babysitters, tricks bullies out of beating him senseless, and takes down a criminal conspiracy by the owner of the Toot Sweet corporation. Just another lazy summer.

My nostalgia-fueled memories of playing through Willy Beamish back in the day convinced me that this was a wonderful game. It features colourful graphics, large characters, genuinely funny situations, and every bit of dialogue and narration is voiced. That was a pretty huge deal back in the day.

And as I readied to play the game again, I couldn’t for the life of me remember why I never finished the damn thing.

Now I do.

The Adventures of Willy Beamish on the Sega CD should be great, but it’s actually excruciating. The problem lies in all that great voice acting and high quality sound effects — every time a new sound or bit of dialoque plays, the entire game freezes for a few seconds while the system loads in the right file. It absolutely destroys the pacing of the game, not to mention extends the play time in the worst way possible.

During this playthrough, I got very close to the end before I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Thus far my trip down memory lane has been a bit of a bust. But hey, the Sega CD is still the greatest system ever made.

Greg Sewart Sega CD, Video Games Willy Beamish

This week! All four hosts are back to talk about games. Voicemails, tweets, what’cha been playin’–this episode is packed. It’s also a bit late to publish, and in the rush it’s not as carefully edited as usual. Since Greg Ford hit his mute button about 35 minutes in for about 10 minutes you may hear some silent patches there when he would normally be speaking–feel free to add your own dialogue in for fun (kind of like an audio Mad Libs). Some of the games discussed in this episode include Wii Sports Resort, Prototype, Monkey Island, the NXE update, Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, Fat Princess, Call of Juarez and more. Enjoy.

Running time: 1:48:06

Direct download: 08_10_09-Episode146.mp3

Chris Johnston Episodes episode, podcast

Welp we have a little bit of a delay for Episode 146. It’ll be out late Monday evening instead of the usual Sunday night/Monday morning thing.

Chris Johnston Uncategorized

On July 26, 2009, Andy Baran, former EGM/EGM2/Expert Gamer editor passed away from pancreatic cancer. He was 35 years old. This episode of the podcast is filled with stories about working with and knowing Andy from CJ, Phil and Greg, as well as voicemails from other past colleagues. Thanks again to all who helped contribute to this episode: Terry Minnich, Ken Williams, Dan Hsu, Kraig Kujawa, Dan Leahy, Mark Hain, Jennifer Whitesides Gavigan, Crispin Boyer, Chris Baker, David Siller, Jeanne Kim Trais, James Mielke, Joe Funk, Mike Vallas and Tracy Baran.

Running time: 1:44:35

Andy Baran’s 1UP blog
Bitmob: RIP EGM’s Andy Baran
VGEvo: R.I.P. Andy Baran of EGM
The Early Days of EGM Part 1
The Early Days of EGM Part 2
Kotaku: EGM Writer Passes Away
Bitmob: In Memory of Andy Baran
“Double Dragon” by The Minibosses

Direct download: 08_03_09-Episode145.mp3

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly, Episodes andy baran, EGM, episode, podcast