S2 E8: Wasteland, AKA Fallout 0
By the late 80s, the 8-bit computer boom set off by the Apple II was winding to a close, but not before Brian Fargo could prove that there was still some untapped potential in those archaic chips. Fresh off the success of A Bard's Tale, Fargo hired up a team of pen...
S2 E7: Mad Max And the Road to the Apocalypse
Searching for the inspiration behind Wasteland and the Fallout series, we look back at the independent film that started it all. And, if you haven't seen the film in a while or ever, it probably isn't what you think it is. Seriously, where are the fights over gasoline...
Get Back 2 Bein 4 Fab Guys
This episode we continue our discussion of The Beatles: Get Back and the post-Beatles fab four solo careers.
Get Back
This episode and next we break from our regular season to bring you a conversation on the new documentary Get Back. Our conversation roves between observations on the filmmaking and the four who fab along with their post-Beatles careers.
S2 E6: The Oregon Trail Across the Ages
It wasn’t until 1985, 14 years after the original, that the game most people associate with The Oregon Trail name was released for the Apple II. Benefiting greatly from the Apple II’s breakthrough success, especially in the education sector, Philip Bouchard reimagined...
S2 E5: The Oregon Trail, 50 Years of Dysentary
Looking for a way to get his students engaged in the material, Don Rawitsch decided he was going to make a board game about the western migration to Oregon in the 1800s. His roommates who knew a little about computers suggested they build it as a computer program...
S2 E4: Ultima IV & The Origin of Morality in Games
Video games, like Richard Garriott were still in their adolescence in the early 80s. Garriott, known as the father of computer role-playing games, straight off the success of the first three games in his groundbreaking Ultima series that he developed while still in...
S2 E3: A Couple of Pimaniacs
Surreal psychedelics come to video games. In 1982, Mel Croucher, an anti-establishment music producer and father of the British video game industry, released Pimania a puzzler that blended a virtual mystery with a real one. Pimaniacs, as he referred to the players...
S2 E2: How Rogue and the Roguelike Were Born
Where did Rogue and the Roguelike come from? Created to appease its own programmer's lust for adventure, Rouge (1980) built the game world from scratch each time you played. On top of that, it is one of the first games that based its play and setting on the still...
S2 E1: Spacewar! Or Pong Wasn’t the First Video Game?
Computers were built for war. Specifically, calculating artillery bombardments. It wasn't until a group of students at MIT, uninterested by the traditional, often painfully practical, applications of computers, challenged themselves to create a game, that the true...