Retronauts

Sonic the Hedgehog essentially sat out the 32-bit generation, which dealt a serious blow to Sega's financial situation. But by the time the company was ready to launch their new hardware, Sega finally delivered what a generation of gamers had been screaming about for years: a TRUE 3D Sonic game. On this week's episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Ray Barnholt, and Caty McCarthy as the crew digs into Sonic's first 3D outing and decides if it's a stellar success or an ambitious failure.

Nintendo never created a follow-up to 2002's Metroid Fusion, but this week Jeremy interviews the developers who did: Dan Kratt and Graham Scott, who put together DS/GBA cult classic Scurge Hive, and Joakim Sandberg, creator of Iconoclasts.

Benj Edwards has long dreamed of curating a museum of vintage PC history, and he's amassed hundreds of classic computers to make it happen. We talk about the unique challenges of preserving so many aging machines… especially finding room for them all.

Jeremy and Bob convene with Chris Kohler and Henry Gilbert to take another look at the ways a recent hit release draws on the heritage of a long-running game franchise. It's Super Mario Odyssey, and it celebrates 35+ years of Mario (and Donkey Kong!).

By request of patron Jeff Vlasek, we circle back around to go deep on Brøderbund, a company whose catalog we've touched on numerous times over the past year under the aegis of other subjects. This episode, though, it's all Brøderbund, all the time!

With Metal Gear Survive flopping and Hideo Kojima absent from Konami, the future of Metal Gear is fuzzy—or completely nonexistent. But, thankfully, Retronauts is a past-based operation, and there's plenty of Metal Gear behind us to look back on and discuss. On this episode, join Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert as the two-man crew tackles your most burning questions about Metal Gear.

Doom is back in the public consciousness thanks to the stellar 2016 reboot, but when was the last time you thought back to the 1993 original that changed the face of PC gaming? From the fascinating behind-the-scenes development stories of plucky computer geniuses/Diet Coke addicts, to the sheer impact it had on the gaming landscape, there's enough going on with Doom to fill an entire podcast series—yet we tried to fit everything into a single episode. On this installment of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Jeff Green and Gary Butterfield as the crew rips and tears their way through a discussion of a game that truly launched a genre.

Jeremy visits WayForward's offices to speak to Austin Ivansmith and Tomm Hulett making a modern-day licensed "16-bit" platformer with The Mummy Demastered, then chats with Mega Cat's Zack Manko about his studio's modern-day home-brewed NES games.

Continuing our exploration of media properties that inspired classic games (and, also, the games they inspired), Jeremy, Ben, and Chris climb down the Fratelli's fireplace to hunt for the ancient treasure known as The Goonies.

Jeremy speaks to Josh Fairhurst and Douglas Bogart about the Limited Run Games mission of preserving classics (and future classics) through the safety of physical media.