My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

My guest today is a game director who has pioneered new forms of nonlinear storytelling that blend film and games. After twelve-year stint at the British development studio Climax, where he directed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, he began work on an independent project, Her Story.In the game, partly inspired by Sharon Stone’s audition tapes for the film Basic Instinct, you sift through a trove of police interview footage to uncover a mystery. Her Story’s style of disconnected, live action sleuthing has become characteristic of his work, which includes the games Telling Lies and, most recently, the Netflix-published Immortality, described by Prospect Magazine as a“culture-spanning, psycho-visual experiment.”“All my games have been about identity,” he says. “It’s scary that the people we’ve known for decades are unknowable to us.” Welcome, Sam Barlow.All voiceover performances courtesy of Ed Hawkins: http://edwardhawkinsbass.comPlay the console:A Mind Forever VoyagingPortal (1986)Amnesia (1986)MindwheelAisleThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is editor-in-chief of Time Out London. After graduating from SOAS University with a degree in religion and the history of art, he moved to China for a few years, then struck out as a freelance writer contributing to, among other publications, The Times, the Observer, Heat magazine and the New Statesman.In 2012 he assumed the role of features editor at the men’s magazine FHM, of which he later became deputy editor. From there, he edited the pioneering newsletter Mr Hyde, and then became editor of the gravely missed ShortList magazine. In 2019, he took the top job at Time Out. Throughout his career, my guest has often run video game-themed special editions, building on his personal passion for the medium.Play the console:Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesMortal Kombat IIShenmueMario Kart 8 DeluxeDark Souls: RemasteredThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is multi-award-winning stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. Born in Edgware London, to a Punjabi Sikh family, he was in his mid-twenties when he first tried stand-up. Five years later he became the first British act to perform at the Caribbean Comedy Festival in Trinidad.Since then he has been a guest panellist on 8 out of 10 Cats, performed twice at Live at the Apollo, and is one of the most memorable contestants on the hit show Taskmaster, having appeared in season 3. In 2017 he became the first British Asian stand-up comic to sell out Wembley Arena and two years later this record-breaking show was made into an Amazon Prime special, and released worldwide.Since 2021, he has been the host of the hit podcast Paul Chowdhry's PudCast, in which he interviews comedians, and my guest is about to start a month-long run at the Edinburgh festival. Play the console:Duck HuntMike Tyson's Punch-Out!!Street Fighter IIDouble DragonGrand Theft Auto IIIThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is an American food critic and voice actor. Born in Chicago in the late seventies, he began performing in public as a young child after he joined the chorus for a production of the opera Carmen, appearing alongside the tenor Plácido Domingo.He began voicing commercials at the age of seven, before moving to California hoping to take on character roles. There he joked with a friend that his ideal role would be to voice the pirate Guybrush Threepwood in the Monkey Island series of video games.Two months later he was cast as the character in The Curse of Monkey Island. He has since reprised the role for each of the Monkey Island sequels, as well as providing cameos in Rare’s beloved pirate game, Sea of Thieves, six Star Wars games and two Metal Gear Solids. Alongside this work, my guest has worked as the restaurant critic for the Arizona Republic.Play the console:The Secret of Monkey IslandThief II: The Metal AgeGuitar Hero (2005)FirewatchHalf-Life: AlyxThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is a writer and narrative designer for independent and blockbuster video games. Born in London she studied English Literature at Kingston University, then completed her postgrad in journalism. She worked as a freelance writer, contributing to the Guardian and the BBC, often covering in games and the lack of representation of people of colour within the industry.In 2014 she took a course titled ‘Writing For Games’, which resulted in ‘Before I Forget’, an affecting indie game in which you play as a dementia sufferer. In 2020 she joined Massive Entertainment, the Swedish developer of The Division series, to work as a senior narrative designer on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an open world action-adventure game based on the James Cameron-directed Avatar films.She is also writing Windrush Tales, a narrative video game about the triumphs and tribulations of two Caribbean immigrants to post-war Britain, in the world’s first Windrush-themed video game. Play the console:Beneath a Steel SkyTony Hawk's Pro Skateboarding City of HeroesVirginiaWhat Remains of Edith Finch Thank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is an English programmer, game-maker and President of the Kyoto-based video game studio Q-Games. Born in London, he dropped out of school at the age of 17 to join Argonaut Games where, among other titles, he worked on the Game Boy space combat title, X.The project so impressed Nintendo, that the company invited my guest to Japan, where he contributed to StarFox, a now legendary Super Nintendo dogfighting game featuring an anthropomorphic fox. After a stint working for Sony in America, my guest returned to Japan to join the development team behind the PlayStation 2 console, creating the famous ‘ducks in a bath’ tech demo.In 2001 he left Sony to found his own company, creating the brilliant PixelJunk series of games, most recently the dystopian world building game The Tomorrow Children. Welcome, Dylan Cuthbert.  Play the console:Carrier CommandSuper Mario Bros. 3Ridge RacerSmuggler's RunDark SoulsThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is an English comedian, actor and one of the most prolific joke writers in the UK. He first made a room laugh as a young child at his aunt’s wedding, when, during the ceremonial speeches, the other guests overheard him speaking to his mother.While a student at the University of Sheffield he again became an accidental stand-up when, at the last minute, he filled in for the compere at a comedy event. Since then he has delighted audiences with his rapid fire joke-telling, both at the Edinburgh Festival, where he has been nominated for the 'Best Show' Comedy Award, and on television as a regular panellist on BBC's Mock The Week, ITV's The Stand Up Sketch Show, and most recently, the new US series The Great American Joke-Off.My guest is also a presenter on BBC's videogames TV show and podcast ‘Press X To Continue’ – for which he has completed more than a hundred games every year since 2020.Play the console:Dark Souls IIThe Witcher 3: Wild HuntDarkwoodDisco ElysiumThe Last Of Us Part IIThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is a French Moroccan political journalist and author based in London. She grew up in Nantes on the west coast of France, then moved to the UK in 2009 to study journalism at the University of Westminster.After graduating, she freelanced for several broadsheets, then joined the Evening Standard as a political diarist. In 2016 she became the media and politics correspondent for BuzzFeed News where she broke stories including the UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s meeting with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.Since leaving BuzzFeed she has become a prolific freelancer, and the author of three books, 2019’s ‘Haven’t You Heard? A Guide To Westminster Gossip And Why Mischief Gets Things Done’, 2021’s ‘ Honourable Misfits: A Brief History of Britain’s Weirdest, Unluckiest, and most Dangerous MPs’ and, most recently, ‘Escape: How a Generation Shaped, Destroyed and Survived the Internet.’She is also an eager player of video games – and has completed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild without dying once. Welcome, Marie le Conte.Play the console:Soulcalibur IIRayman LegendsThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildHadesSlay the SpireThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is a writer, producer and director of plays, films and videogames. In 1997 he left Belgium to study theatre at NYU in New York. While a student my guest began freelancing as a video game journalist contributing to Next Gen, Official Dreamcast Magazine and Famitsu in Japan.He then joined Treyarch to work on the video game adaptation of Steven Spielberg's MINORITY REPORT, a project that set him on the path of cross-media storytelling. His 2014 graphic novel RICKY ROUSE HAS A GUN was named one of The Boston Globe’s books of the year. Then two years later his debut feature film, THE WHITE KING, adapted from a Hungarian novel, debuted at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.Most recently, my guest directed C-Smash VRS, a virtual reality-based follow-up to the cult classic Arcade and Dreamcast game, Cosmic Smash.Play the console:OutRunHeart of DarknessRidge Racer Type 4Portal 2C-Smash VRSThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is creative director and writer of some of the most memorable and influential independent games of recent years, including Bastion, Pyre, Transistor and, most recently, the smash hit Hades, which topped many of 2021’s best games of the year lists.In the nineties he co-founded Arcadia, a website dedicated to films and video games, which led to an internship at Gamespot, one of the largest websites specialising in video game coverage in the world, of which he eventually became editor-in-chief.After leaving journalism for the world of game development, he worked on the Command and Conquer series, then, in 2010, joined Supergiant Games as creative director.He once said: “Our goal is for each game we make...to be good enough and idiosyncratic enough so that it hits someone at the right place at the right time and becomes their favourite.”Play the console:Final Fantasy TacticsThe Legend of Zelda: Wind WakerPanzer Dragoon OrtaMetal Gear Solid 3: SubsistenceBloodborneThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.