Retronauts

Soyo Oka might not be the most well-known Nintendo composer, but in her time with the company, she crafted some amazing soundtracks that helped define the distinct qualities of the SNES' sound chip. And while the music of Pilotwings and Super Mario Kart is nothing to sneeze it, her greatest work for Nintendo can be found in SimCity, the 1991 Super Nintendo port of Maxis' PC classic...

Sing it with us, now: Link! He come to town! Come to save, the Princess Zelda! We're all familiar with the mythic exploits of Nintendo's elfin hero, but this latest episode of Retronauts dives deep into one of his greatest adventures of all time. Sure, A Link to the Past is a beloved classic, but on this episode of Retronauts, we partake on a journey to truly discover WHY...

Last year we looked at the Castlevania NES trilogy; now we explore its weird but wonderful follow-up, Super Castlevania IV for Super NES.

25 years ago, the landscape of adventure games changed forever with The Secret of Monkey Island. This LucasArts classic essentially changed the rules for a once-formidable genre; instead of punishing experimentation, Monkey Island presents a death-free world where players can't paint themselves into game-ending corners—definitely not the norm for adventure games of its era...

From Software might have set the world on fire in recent years with the game-changing Souls RPG series, but they've had a long history of innovation—even if their technology wasn't always up to snuff. And one of their more interesting creations of the PlayStation era came in the form of Echo Night, a first-person adventure game that bears a striking resemblance to the recent wave of "walking simulators" taking the indie world by storm...

Jeremy takes a look at one of gaming's great studios, whose work seems to have been largely forgotten in this day and age. Will Treasure rise again, or will their two-decade collection of brilliance stand as their legacy?

Retronauts vet and Sony enthusiast/employee Shane Bettenhausen joins us to discuss the 20th anniversary of the PS1 launch in America. (This episode is running before its intended September time slot due to the tragic news that breaks midway through.)

Can a podcast be self-indulgent if the topic was provided by someone else? The famous Dr. Sparkle joins us to fulfill Sean Clements' Kickstarter topic request: Chrongaming. Join us as we psychoanalyze our own obsessive-compulsive behavior!

It's been a wild couple of weeks for The Unlikeliest Things Ever: A single conference at E3 brought us the return of The Last Guardian, news of the long-awaited Final Fantasy VII remake, and Shenmue's glorious rise from the ashes. But just a few days before this madness, Nintendo had its own bomb to drop: The eShop launch of the 1989 RPG Mother, which the company originally planned to release stateside in 1991...

This week on Retronauts, we're resurrecting two features from our older seasons that normally don't fit into the show's refurbished format: going over the best retro rereleases, and responding to your comments and questions. Those carefree days of 2013 and earlier are back, baby! (If only for 90 minutes...