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| The Vintage Gamer Special #04: Origins 2008 Interviews At long last, the annual Origins episode of The Vintage Gamer. As this is the third year, this officially makes it a cherished tradition. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there was no podcasters panel so instead I went around and did some interviews at some of the small press booths. A big “Thank You” to all who participated — if what you hear interests you, please support them with your dollars. For a fuller picture of the show, I recommend you check out The Spiel Origins episode for a lot more show floor interviews, and the Dice Tower Origins episode for more info and a nice interview with (Spiel des Jahres winner!) Reiner Knizia. Featured interviews:
Pictures of my trip to Origins including most of these folks can be found on my flickr feed. You can also see the lovely new sewer line. |
| The Vintage Gamer #33: Illuminati Oh my stars and garters, it’s another Vintage Gamer! This time I cover the 80s conspiracy game, Illuminati. Lie to your friends, stab them in the back, all to take over the world (sounds like Diplomacy — or a bizarre version of Lifeboats). All this, plus some Vintage Gamer news and feedback!
I’m at Balticon and have to run to a panel… show notes tomorrow. |
| The Vintage Gamer #32: Chess Variants And so The Vintage Gamer returns to its regular yet irregular schedule. In this show I spend over an hour talking about one of my secret loves: chess variants. I talk about games of the past, games from other countries, and some other unusual variants. (and this barely scratches the surface). In addition, our new sponsor Bob stops by for a visit. All this, plus unrequested editorial commentary from a groundskeeper and a curious dog.
Additional Links:
Final thoughts: With all of these games, I know I screwed something up somewhere, so feel free to correct me. |
| The Vintage Gamer Special Episode: Tic-Tac-Toe Champion The Vintage Gamer begins its triumphant return with a special interview episode with the Tic-Tac-Toe Champion of the World. If that’s not enough, we have a new sponsor! And the usual intro and outro music. So yes, it’s a chock-full episode.
Links: Final thoughts: Real show in 2 weeks. Promise and for true. |
| The Vintage Gamer #31: Nuclear War Back from the abyss with an actual game review show. This time I talk about the darkly humorous game Nuclear War, designed by Doug Malewicki and published by Flying Buffalo, Inc. I also cover what’s been happening with me over the past few months, discuss some recent gaming news (vintage and otherwise), and talk about possibilities for future shows.
Links:
Final thoughts: Yeah, yeah, Dune is not an Eon game, but it might as well be. |
| TVG Special #2: Origins 2007 Board Game Podcasters Q&A It being the second year in a row, I now present the traditional recording of the gaming podcasters panel. The panel this year was organized by Scott Nicholson, and featured board game podcasters. Sorry about the delay on this — I used two recorders to get full coverage of the panel so there was some post-production involved. Scott Nicholson (Board Games with Scott and On Board Games) Plus special guests: Don Dehm (Pulp Gamer) oh, and Many thanks to Scott Nicholson for organizing this — it was a great panel of people. |
| The Vintage Gamer #30: Interview with Eric Goldberg After an even longer hiatus, I’m back — at least for the moment. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with another gaming luminary, Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies. We talked for forty-five minutes about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, boardgames and briefly about his later work in online and mobile games.
Links:
Final thoughts: Another big thank you to Eric Goldberg for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me. |
| The Vintage Gamer #29: Interview with Greg Costikyan After a long hiatus, I’m back. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with gaming luminary Greg Costikyan of Manifesto Games. We talked for half an hour about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, and his later work in online and independent digital games.
Links:
Final thoughts: A big thank you to Greg Costikyan for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me. |
| The Vintage Gamer #28: Tales of the Arabian Nights Back to board games with this episode, where I do double-coverage by talking about both another paragraph-based game and another Eric Goldberg game. The game is Tales of the Arabian Nights, originally published by West End Games in 1985 and republished and revised by Edition Erlkonig in 1999. In this one, you and the other players take on roles from the Tales of Scheherazade and have adventures around Baghdad and the surrounding barbarian lands, only to return home with great stories, to meet your destiny, or even to become Sultan.
Links:
Final thoughts: I’ve switched to using Garageband to do my sound recording and editing simply because Audacity isn’t terribly stable on the Mac. I think it sounds pretty good, but let me know if you notice any quirks — I’m still getting used to it. |
| The Vintage Gamer #27: The Foolâ??s Errand (VG) As it’s been a while since I’ve done a pure computer game, I decided to do another blast from the Macintosh past. This time the game is The Fool’s Errand, designed and created by Cliff Johnson, and originally published by Miles Computing. It’s a puzzle game that should hopefully appeal to you pencil puzzlers out there. I also talk about the follow-up games At the Carnival and 3 in Three, as well as the sequel, The Fool and His Money. I also give the final winners of the Politika games, and talk about some recent appearances on other shows.
Links:
Final thoughts: As I was focusing primarily on the computer games, I inadvertantly forgot a few elements of Cliff Johnson’s recent career. After the Philips games wrapped up, he was a consultant to Disney Online, and designed the $100,000 puzzle for David Blaine’s book The Mysterious Stranger. |
| The Vintage Gamer #26: Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective (BG/VG) Finally I return to games that most would consider “vintage,” this one being both 20 years old and out of print. The game this week is Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, a paragraph-based deduction game from Sleuth Publications. I also talk a little bit about the Politika pair of shows, and the continuing Politika board game giveaway. Yes, I managed to get one, maybe two, additional copies. So if you’re interested, drop me a line by Dec 31.
Links:
Final thoughts: Dang it, my original research showed that the FMV version came out as a PC game first, but there it is on Wikipedia: it was released on Sega Genesis (via Sega CD) first. My apologies. |
| The Vintage Gamer #25: Tom Clancyâ??s Politika, Part 2 (BG/VG) This month is the 10-year anniversary of the founding of Red Storm Entertainment. As a commemoration, I’m doing a two-parter on my experience as lead designer on Tom Clancy’s Politika. Not a well-rated or beloved game by any stretch, but I thought that relating our experience would help any aspiring designers out there to avoid the mistakes we made. This week I’m covering the things that I thought didn’t go so well — tune into the previous episode to hear the game description and the things that I thought succeeded.
Links: Final thoughts: One thing I didn’t make clear is that the giveaway is for the Politika boardgame. I also have copies of the computer game, but they might be hard to get running on today’s systems. Still, if you want ‘em… |
| The Vintage Gamer #24: Tom Clancyâ??s Politika, Part 1 (BG/VG) This month is the 10-year anniversary of the founding of Red Storm Entertainment. As a commemoration, I’m doing a two-parter on my experience as lead designer on Tom Clancy’s Politika. Not a well-rated or beloved game by any stretch, but I thought that relating our experience would help any aspiring designers out there to avoid the mistakes we made. This week I’m covering the things that I thought went well — next week, the parts that, er, didn’t go so well.
Links: Final thoughts: Audacity is free, and at times acts like it. Due to its lovely save “feature,” the original high-quality audio for this show is gone, so what you hear is what you get. Also some of this was recorded first thing in the morning, so that’s why the audio does a bit of a switch from clear to somewhat growly early on. |
| The Vintage Gamer #23: Halloween Show And right on the heels of the last episode, a Halloween-themed show, where I cover some vintage board and card games with horror themes.
Final thoughts: This should have been the Illuminati episode. Oh well, 23 skiddoo. Fnord. |
| The Vintage Gamer #22: DragonQuest (RPG) This week on The Vintage Gamer, I cover one of the few threats to Dungeons and Dragons in the fantasy role-playing game market — and one of my favorite RPGs from my past: DragonQuest.
Links:
Final thoughts: Eric Goldberg was also a co-creator of the Paranoia RPG. I should have remembered that. |
| The Vintage Gamer #21: Book Week! This week on The Vintage Gamer, I do reviews of three books about games — one about history, one about art, and one about business:
Other links:
Final thoughts: During the show, I say the name H. R. Murray a number of times — his actual name is H.J.R. Murray. |
| The Vintage Gamer #20: The Awful Green Things From Outer Space (BG) This week, the monster movie game The Awful Green Things from Outer Space. So grab some popcorn and a big orange drink and settle in for a good old fashioned tale of horror.
Game Links:
Final Thoughts: Sorry about the hiss this week and last week. I’m not sure what’s going with the mixer and the I also didn’t talk about online play. There is a Cyberboard gamebox here and I believe I found a similar item for a different play-by-email engine elsewhere, but I wasn’t able to track it down again. |
| The Vintage Gamer #19: Dragon*Con 2006 and Moonshot (BG) A few days late, but better late than never. This week I give an overview of my time at Dragon*Con (promoting a lot of other podcasts in the process: I expect compensation) and follow up with a quick review of the 1997 — or is it 1999? — board game Moonshot.
Game Links: Podcaster Links:
Final Thoughts: J.C. Hutchins gave me a cool button. Scott Sigler offered me scotch, but it’s probably best that I missed out. I forgot to mention that Moonshot won Best Family Game from Games Magazine in 2000. And I don’t need a map. |
| The Vintage Gamer #18: Pente (BG) This week, I cover Pente, the game of capturing and five in a row, as well as a number of other traditional five in a row games. I also talk a bit about Dragon*Con and review some listener feedback.
Links:
Final Thoughts: Challenge Cthulhim at Pente.net! |
| The Vintage Gamer #17: Empire Builder (BG) This week, I am joined in the studio by my lovely podcasting wife Mur, of Geek Fu Action Grip, I Should Be Writing and Pseudopod. We discuss the Empire Builder series of games from Mayfair Games, as well as drift into some other random topics.
Links:
Final Thoughts: It’s hard to say railroad without sounding like Elmer Fudd. |
| The Vintage Gamer #16: Origins 2006 This week on The Vintage Gamer, there is a distinctly non-vintage theme as I review or give impressions of many of the games I saw at Origins. A bit late in coming, but hopefully still appreciated. Start your timers as I cover 14 games in about half an hour…
Other Links:
Final Thoughts: Yes, I know that Eurorails and other crayon rail games aren’t terribly heavy. But they’re heavier and usually have a greater time commitment than Ticket To Ride. And given a choice among train games, they’re at the top for me. |
| TVG Special #1: Origins 2006 Gaming Podcasters Q&A My Origins report show is coming soon, but until then, enjoy this recording that I made of the Saturday podcasting panel, organized by Paul Tevis. The panelists were: Paul Tevis (Have Games, Will Travel) Many thanks to Paul Tevis for organizing this — it was fun! But boy, can podcasters talk… |
| The Vintage Gamer #15: Ace of Aces (BG?) This week, it’s the World War I flying ace game from Nova Games, Ace of Aces. Fly gracefully through the air with your buddies as one of those amazing young pilots in their flying machines — and then shoot them down to buy the farm below.
Ace of Aces Links:
Final Thoughts: The rights for Ace of Aces are currently held by Flying Buffalo, Inc. They’ve done some reprints, but nothing recently as far as I can tell. I’ll ask when I’m at Origins, but based on their web site, I wouldn’t hold your breath. |
| The Vintage Gamer #14: M.U.L.E. (VG) This week, Dani Bunten Berry’s M.U.L.E, a multiplayer classic of the 1980s computer game era. Develop, trade, consume, make a buck and crush your friends! All this and a nifty musical theme…
M.U.L.E. Links:
Final Thoughts: One correction: I stated that Dani Bunten gave a keynote speech at CGDC 1997 — it was actually a lecture in 1997. However, she received a lifetime achievement award in 1998 and was gone a few months later. I had an opportunity to go to that CGDC — I should have taken it. Another correction: I also stated that she might be pleased with the fact that you can play via emulators. Given that neither she nor her heirs see a dime from that, probably not. I also read that one major reason she wanted to republish M.U.L.E. was to update the graphics (Sega wanted to do it, but also wanted to add guns — she said no). So again, probably not. Still, it’s pretty much the only way to play these days, unfortunately. Also, I believe I said that the auction interface was “wonky.” Upon consideration, it’s actually quite elegant, in that you can have a real-time auction amongst four players with a very simple interface. Trying to think about how you’d implement that in a face-to-face situation makes that quite clear… |
| The Vintage Gamer #13: Acquire (BG) This week, the classic game of mergers and acquisitions: Sid Sackson’s Acquire.
Acquire Links:
Final Thoughts: Another point I couldn’t quite fit in is that you really shouldnâ??t consider yourself an owner of the chains that you form. The only advantage is that you get that one extra stock â?? after that anyone can buy in and take over as majority holder. |
| The Vintage Gamer #12: (The) Fury of Dracula (BG) This week, both The Fury of Dracula and Fury of Dracula, the horror hunt game from Games Workshop and Fantasy Flight. Pull up a comfy chair, it’s a long one. Because of that, I’ve added times to the show notes so you can skip around a bit, if you want.
(The) Fury of Dracula Links:
Final Thoughts: Also, most of the material for The Fury of Dracula is scanned in on the BGG site, so check it out if you want to see the original look. You can also get it off auction sites — recent prices range from $25-$35. And finally it’s not Scott on Boardgames, it’s Board Games with Scott. Sorry, Scott. |
| The Vintage Gamer #11: Barbarian Prince (BG) This week, the paragraph-based solitaire game Barbarian Prince. If that’s not enough of a mouthful, it’s also a Dwarfstar game. Sorry about the delay on this one.
Barbarian Prince Links:
Final Thoughts: |
| The Vintage Gamer #10: GDC 2006 Part 2 More from the Game Developer’s Conference in San Jose, California. This covers the remainder of the conference, focusing mainly on the MMBG I mentioned earlier and the game developer’s rant. As before, it’s presented raw and wrrrriggling. Update: added pictures to my Flickr account.
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| The Vintage Gamer #9: GDC 2006 Part 1 This week I’m at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Jose, California. Schmoozing and learning are on the schedule this week (yes, in that order), but I’m taking a little time out to do a few podcasts. This one is mainly about the first three and half days of the conference. There is a little content here for vintage console game players (in the the Nintento talk). A few caveats: I would have pictures, but apparently the drivers for my camera didn’t end up on this laptop, so I’ll upload those later. And I recorded this one outside using a small hand-held mic and an iRiver, so audio quality will be a bit different than normal as well. And no editing — just me in all my raw glory.
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| Vintage Gamer #8: Top Secret (RPG) This week, the espionage roleplaying game Top Secret. Pick your cover carefully, and don’t forget your watch with the sawblade.
Top Secret Links:
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