Never Was A Gamer

Today we're flipping through Dimitri's childhood games catalogue for the Sega Master System, a system that was formative for him and which Michelle has barely heard of! Join us for a quick spin through some easy-to-miss classics, and also Dynamite Dux.

Timecodes:

2.30  Dimitri's history with the Sega Master System

9.10  Ghostbusters

15.12  Master System mascots: Wonderboy

28.10  Master System mascots: Alex Kidd and Miracle World

34.40  Master System mascots: Alex Kidd in Shinobi World

38.40  BREAK

39.30  Dynamite Dux

46.30  Co-op games: Quartet

52.30  Co-op games: Rampage

57.45  Final thoughts

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we're continuing our "We Hate Sports" arc by looking at 3 entries in the Mario Sports saga for Game Cube: Mario Golf Toadstool Tour, Mario Power Tennis, and Super Mario Strikers. (That one's soccer... sort of. There's a weird amount of interpersonal violence.) 

Timecodes:

2.00  Mario Sports.   

6.45  Our histories with these games.   

12.00  Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour.   

28.00  BREAK.   

28.30  Mario Power Tennis.  

46.00  Super Mario Strikers.

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we're diving deep on one of Dimitri's formative childhood games, WWF No Mercy! For the second episode of our "We Hate Sports" arc, we're testing the limits of Michelle's love of lore and Dimitri's ability to explain minor wrestling factions from the late 90s. Enjoy!

Timecodes:

2.00  Wrestling games as party games.  

4.30  The most cursed lore.  

7.45  Predecessors to No Mercy.  

9.45  No Mercy and staging a good match.  

27.50  BREAK  

28.30  The grappling system.  

39.10  Our walk-through: Switchblade Kelley!!!

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we're gonna tear up the abandoned school and the abandoned mall and the streets of Minneapolis with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater! 

We're kicking off a new arc today, which we're calling We Hate Sports! We're going to be tackling sort-of-sports games that made an impact on even the least athletic among us.  

Timecodes:

1.45  The new arc: We Hate Sports!

2.20  Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

5.00  Our history with skate culture

9.00  Development history

22.15  BREAK

22.50  What do you want from a skating game?

24.20  How to skate

42.00  Constructing the idea of a skater

1.02.23  Last thoughts

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we've got another Snap Judgment episode, in which we're sampling a bunch of games from the show floor of E3 1999. Michelle played a booth demo's worth of 13 games and reports back on the highs and lows of a pretty good year.

Timecodes:

2.10  Why E3 1999?    

8.15  Show floor.    

16.10  Jurassic Park: Warpath.    

20.02  Chocobo Racing.    

23.26  Dino Crisis.    

BREAK, 26.40    

30.10  Star Wars Episode 1: Pod Racer.    

32.10  Donkey Kong 64.    

39.30  Omikron: The Nomad Soul.    

BREAK, 44.55    

48.30  Sonic Adventure.    

53.50  Crazy Taxi.    

54.45  Power Stone.    

1.00.00  A short story about the Sims.    

1.03.19  Final Thoughts.

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we are plunging deep into Derek Yu's groundbreaking roguelike platformer, Spelunky! Michelle enters with one question: why is this all my favourite game designers' favourite game? We leave with ANSWERS. 

Timecodes:     

2.45  Roguelikes.   

12.30  How Spelunky happened.   

BREAK     

21.25  Our expectations for the gameplay.   

28.00  Zones, levels, and details.   

BREAK     

42.00  Playing with genre: progression.   

52.00  Is it a platformer?   

1.05.00  Last thoughts.

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we're continuing with our Indie Boom arc by looking at bona fide indie auteur Jonathan "Joe" Blow's first game, Braid. Join us as we argue about puzzles and Michelle struggles to remember the game's core mechanic. 

Timecodes:   

1.10  A word about Playdate!   

6.45  Introducing Braid (and Jonathan Blow).   

BREAK     

20.00  What Michelle knew going in.   

22.00  Narrative, meaning, and mechanics.   

BREAK     

40.10  Worlds and puzzles.   

1.10.10  Final thoughts.   

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we're kicking off our arc on the Indie Boom of 2008-2012 with Bastion, the very first game from Supergiant. We're both huge fans of Hades, so it was really fun to discover (and revisit) this old trendsetter. 

Timecodes:   

2.00  Introducing our new arc: The Indie Boom!    

3.15  What is an indie, exactly?   

BREAK    

23.40  Our history with Supergiant Games.   

28.40  What is Bastion?   

31.40  The narrator.   

38.45  How Bastion tells its story.   

BREAK     

55.30  Gameplay, weapons, and standout levels.

Today on Never Was A Gamer, let's be dudes and play beat 'em ups! We're doing a sampler set of classic games in a quest to figure out what we actually want from this genre.

Timecodes:

1.30  Our history with the genre.   

8.55  How to evaluate these games.   

BREAK    

16.35  What we played: Final Fight.   

24.45  The Simpsons.   

31.45  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.   

BREAK    

42.25  Streets of Rage 2.   

BREAK    

53.15  Final Fight 3.   

1.08.15  Final thoughts.    

Today on Never Was A Gamer, we're digging into Heavy Rain, the breakthrough game for self-styled auteur David Cage. This one got really silly and then real serious - it's meaty because we were having such a great time digging through this game's ambitions and its various successes and failures. Safe to say it got under both of our skins, but not necessarily in the way Cage would have imagined. Enjoy!

Timecodes:    

0.55  What's Michelle's beef with David Cage?   

4.00  Choosing Heavy Rain.   

8.30  What is Heavy Rain?   

15.00  What is it like to play this game?   

BREAK    

32.30  Heavy Rain as a serial killer thriller.   

1.02.00  The big picture.