February 6th, 2009

By now you should be well aware of the podcast Rebel FM that is produced weekly by the people that brought us 1UP FM. What you may not know is that there are now two more all-new podcasts created by ex-1UP employees.

The Geekbox Podcast being recorded at Comics ConspiracyRyan Scott (of GFW Radio and LAN Party podcast fame) has a new show called The Geekbox. Each week Ryan Scott, along with Karen Chu, Greg Ford, Andrew Fitch and Ryan “Master” Higgins gather at Comics Conspiracy in Sunnyvale California to record The Geekbox podcast. The Geekbox is something of a spiritual successor to GFW Radio and LAN Party by virtue that video games are not the main object of conversation. Rather, the crew discusses all things “geek” as they come up. World of Warcraft, Burn Notice and Lost are some recurring topics in the first three episodes. Other conversation concern things from comic books to Andrew Fitch’s dating life.

1up, 1up, 1up, 1up, 1up, 1up, 1up...Not to be overlooked is Area 5, a new production company made up of former GameVideos employees. Their debut project, CO-OP, is a video podcast produced in the same general style of The 1UP Show; roundtable video game discussions with relevant gameplay footage displayed throughout. The first “arc” of CO-OP is a two-parter called “Reflection”. Therein, the Area 5 folks invite over their former co-workers to discuss their favorite games of 2008. Both videos together tally up to about 45 minutes. While CO-OP is free and hosted at YouTube for now, Area 5 may move to a subscription model in the future. There is no telling yet.

Finally, Rebel FM is trucking along. Audio quality has improved immensely thanks to the new equipment they were able to purchase with listener donations. As I said in my last 1UP-themed post, they plan to continue the popular Backlog segment from 1UP FM. Their first game was selected on-air this week, and it is Call of Cthulhu. Discussion about that game sounds like it will begin on next week’s episode. I have not played the game before and have meant to for years, so I think I will try to play along. It’s available for Xbox and PC and there is a Rebel FM post with information on where to acquire it.

January 8th, 2009

And there was much rejoicing.

And there was much rejoicing.

Though 1UP has now been gutted and sold to the highest bidder and EGM has been axed, several ex-Ziff Davis employees have already begun to rise above in the form of the Rebel FM podcast. In the spirit of 1UP FM, Nick Suttner, Matt Chandronait, Anthony Gallegos, Philip Kollar, Jade Kraus, and Ryan O’Donnell have brought us a brand new audio production. Though they experienced some technical issues which resulted in some sketchy audio quality, the Rebel FM crew gets right down to doing what they’ve always done: talk about video games. But not before they shared a bit about what went down at 1UP this past Tuesday. They’ve also said that the Backlog segment which 1UP FM listeners had come to love will find a new home in Rebel FM, albeit probably under a different name. I was very glad to hear this news.

Rebel FM is currently headquartered at Anthony Gallegos’ old blog Eat Sleep Game. If the site is still down when you’re reading this, you can grab Episode 1 of the podcast via Bittorrent.

I would also like to mention that torrents have been made for collections of several 1UP podcasts including 1UP FM, GFW Radio and 1UP Yours. Get your P2P on.

January 7th, 2009

The news hit on 1/06/2009 that 1UP.com, MyCheats.com, GameTab.com and GameVideos.com would be sold to UGO.com. EGM has been closed. Many people on the 1UP staff lost their jobs. The 1UP Show is now canceled with the 1UP podcasts (including 1UP FM and the Backlog) likely to follow suit. This news immediately had a profound effect on gamers, not to mention the whole of games journalism. I turned to Twitter just after word of the acquisition hit my RSS feed and watched as the many reactions from both 1UP staffers and other games journalists poured in. I’ve compiled the reactions here in this video:

July 3rd, 2008

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of new and interesting ways of interacting with music in video game form. That’s why I’m eager to share this video. It’s from another episode of The 1UP Show that was released a few weeks ago. It’s just the one segment of a full episode, but this in particular is what I wanted to share.

The video is of an interview with two developers of a Nintendo DS application called KORG DS-10. It’s a full-blown synthesizer for your DS that allows you to create entire songs that you can output to external mixers and even save to the flash cart. As I am a huge fan of 8-bit music and especially music that is generated using GameBoy systems (pornophonique, anyone?), this application is quite relevant to my interests! I have read in a couple of places that this will be coming to the States at some point, but in the video they are unsure. I don’t know who to believe, but I’ll import it if I have to. I’m pretty sure it’s coming out in July.

June 2nd, 2008

Every week I usually can’t wait to watch a new episode of The 1UP Show. For this week and the last they’ve been running “special” episodes; I put this weeks’ episode off for a couple of days, but I just now finished watching it and I couldn’t help but to rush here and share it. As much as I’ve come to dislike recycling content here, this must be seen!

This weeks’ episode is 40 minutes of a dinner meeting between Mark MacDonald (Editor: EGM), Erik Wolpaw (Writer: Portal), Dylan Cuthbert (President: Q Games) and Jonathan Mak (Creator: Everyday Shooter). This video is utterly fascinating. If you’ve never thought of game designers as artists, or of games as art, and these discussions don’t make you think twice about your stance, I can’t help you. The designers give insights into their varrying creative processes, talk of their past projects and even their gaming habits and what it’s like to play a game as a designer. Please, do yourself a favor and give this a watch. Also, feel free to comment with your thoughts and if I should keep posting things like this or not.