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 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: