July 21st, 2009

By now, especially if you’re a listener of such gaming podcasts as A Life Well Wasted, Out of The Game or the Bitmob Mobcast, you may have caught wind of the self-titled debut album from Robert Ashley and Sam Frigard’s genre-defying band I Come to Shanghai. Robert and Sam’s labor of love was three years in the making, having co-written and co-produced each of the album’s ten tracks themselves. “Another Sunday Morning,” the song I’ve selected to feature below was, as I understand it, written foremost by Robert Ashley, and is one that I like on a personal level very much.

I Come to Shanghai is being distributed under Creative Commons with a “name your price” model at the band’s official website.

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.

December 3rd, 2008

1UP.com produces many fine gaming podcasts such as 1UP Yours, Retronauts and LAN Party (previously GFW Radio). While they are all worth listening to, the podcast formerly known as EGM Live and currently known as 1UP FM offers something unique: The Backlog.

The Backlog is a feature at the tail end of each week’s episode where some 1UP editors get together to discuss some cult classic games that the majority of gamers probably skipped in favor of some of the more well-marketed releases of their time. The game that the editors play is voted on by the community in forum polls. The editors all play separately, on their own time, often on differing systems. Meeting each week, for as many weeks as it takes, they discuss their progress and give their thoughts on the games. Each segment runs for about thirty minutes or more. So far Backlog has featured Shadow of the Colossus, Psychonauts, Indigo Prophecy (AKA Fahrenheit), and STALKER. Special guests relevant to each game are not a rarity. During the final segment for Psychonauts they were joined by lead designer Tim Schafer. After playing Indigo Prophecy they interviewed producer Constantine Hantzopoulos. I don’t believe they had a special guest for Shadow of the Colossus or STALKER; it’s likely that a language barrier was to blame.

If you’re wondering why I’m turning you on to this now, it’s because this week on the 12/01/08 episode of 1UP FM (at 73:15!) began the discussion of Beyond Good & Evil. You may recall BG&E being featured here at Downloadable Suicide as a cheap game that you need to play back in June. Did you play? Doing so has never made more sense than it does now.