Retronauts

With the recent release of Mario + Raving Rabbids, and with Super Mario Odyssey's launch lurking just a few months away, we're currently undergoing a sort of Mario Madnessmuch like the same outbreak that attacked several million children back in '88...

Not long ago, corporations employed colorful cartoon characters to lure hungry and impressionable children into their dens of corn-based products. And, since this time period happened to overlap with the rise of video games, several food mascots ended up starring in their very own interactive experiences...

Kurt Kalata and Rob Russo join us from Hardcore Gaming 101 to delve into the history of Konami's legendary Gradius series. From its prequel (Scramble) to its most recent spinoff (Otomedius), we blast our way through the span of the entire series!

Fresh from Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, Jeremy and Bob yield the floor to Kurt Kalata and Rob Russo from Hardcore Gaming 101 to explain the history of Falcom's Dragon Slayer series. Just in time for the PS4 debut of the latest spinoff, Tokyo Xanadu!

Jeremy, Bob, and Chris hunker down to discuss the entirety of Square Enix's Mana series but only make it through the first two games: Final Fantasy Adventure for Game Boy and Secret of Mana for SNES. (Whoops, we accidentally went extremely in-depth.)

Jeremy speaks with legendary developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi on his start in games, the genesis of Space Channel 5 and Rez, and face-mounted Game Gears. Later, Kishi and Kim Justice join to discuss Metal Gear's anniversary and Fire Pro World, respectively.

We NES kids know Little Nemo best from his classic Capcom platformer, but what about the character's role in a revolutionary newspaper comic from the early 20th century? And what of Little Nemo's extraordinarily expensive and fairly obscure box office flop that spawned two different video games? On this episode of Retronauts Micro join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Mikel Reparaz as the gang traces the history of Winsor McCay's sleepy hero across three different forms of media.

Following up on the first Metroidvania episode from a few months back, we collect the jump boots and circle back around to take a look at the next stage of the genre's evolution: The NES era.

Ah, Super Mario Bros. 3. What more can be said about Nintendo R&D4's grand finale for the 8-bit era? Well, we managed to fill 90 minutes discussing this timeless game, so the answer is "a whole lot." On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Ray Barnholt, and Henry Gilbert as the crew takes a closer look at one of Nintendo's greatest creations, and find it's still worth beaming about.

Chris Sims and Benj Edwards help Jeremy field a patron request to explore the Game Gear version of Batman... along with a bunch of other handheld titles we gave short shrift in our recent classic Batman games survey.