Living The Nerd Life Podcast

We didn’t have to look far to find the topic of GOTG Micro 4: St. Louis’ own, Crashlands from developer Butterscotch Shenanigans. Ryan Dampf from Living the Nerd Life is back again to speak to this interesting take on the open world crafting genre. Be sure to listen to our last Micro episode on Don’t Starve too, as there is a lot of comparing and contrasting on display for these games.  Show Notes: Butterscotch Shenanigans has their own podcast if you’re interested in hearing more from the devs themselves. 

Like Zach Fleeman before him, Matt Giguere is back to discuss one of the games that made his top five list of the year…except it’s from his top five list from 2014, Kirby: Triple Deluxe. If you don’t remember our episode on Kirby’s Dream Land 2 (it was our fourth episode after all), we give a refresher on Kirby’s history and what makes Kirby: Triple Deluxe unique (or not so unique, as the case may be).

Once more into the darkness we go as Living the Nerd Life’s Ryan Dampf is back again to speak to another mobile game: Don’t Starve for Vita, iOS and pretty much any other console you can think of. And Chase makes an impassioned speech for another Klei title, Mark of the Ninja, to be ported just as much as Don’t Starve has been, but that’s neither here nor there.

Micro is back and this time, we’re tackling a true iOS classic in Vlambeer’s Ridiculous Fishing. We also get into a discussion about game cloning and how it affects developers, consumers and the industry at large. 

Welcome to a new feature from Gamers on the Go. As the name implies, “Micro” are to be shorter episodes (~30 minutes) and focused on mobile and bite-sized play experiences.  For the debut of GOTG Micro, we’ve got the founder of Living the Nerd Life,Ryan Dampf, to talk with Chase about 2015′s Lara Croft Go. 

After seeing Titan Souls on Zach Fleeman’s top five handheld games of 2015 list, Chase wanted to get him back to talk about this interesting little adventure. We chat about its overt references to games like Shadow of the Colossus and The Legend of Zelda, Chase’s certain love for an oft-forgotten Godzilla enemy and what it all means…if it means anything at all.   Zach put up a YouTube video that details even more of his thoughts on the game. In the show, we talk about a specific Steam forum thread that explores the origins of the Titans’ names and how that may inform the game’s story. Read more about it here.  And really, you should read Nick Suttner’s book on Shadow of the Colossus. An excellent book on an excellent game. Grab a copy at Boss Fight Books. 

The final part of our three-part 50th episode epic. This section focuses on our favorite games on Nintendo handhelds.  Zach had to duck out last episode, so it’s just Chase and Matt for this one.  Thanks for supporting GOTG over the years. We’ll be posting more content in 2016 and beyond!

Matt and Zach are back for Part 2 as we discuss our favorite non-Nintendo platform handheld games of all time. Not the most elegant name, but this gave us some interesting restrictions to make our lists.  Zach ends up having to duck out a bit early so he shares his favorite Nintendo handheld games of all time as well. Matt and Chase will share those lists on Part 3 Speaking of which, the third and final part will be going up on Saturday. 

Matt Giguere and Zach Fleeman are back again to discuss our favorite handheld games of 2015.  This is the first part of our three-part 50th episode blowout and covers each of our personal games of the year. Part 2 will be released on Thursday and the final part comes out on Saturday. These will cover our favorite handheld games of all time on non-nintendo and nintendo handheld systems respectively.  Please bear with us on some of the audio issues. This wasn’t originally going to be a three-parter, but I wasn’t going to put you through a four hour podcast.  And lastly, we will also be posting our lists in text form. Check back in all this week and next for those. The first one goes up tomorrow.  Thanks for sticking with us for 50 episodes. Looking forward to delivering more to you in 2016 and beyond. 

Gamers on the Go frequent flyer, Zach Fleeman returns to the podcast to talk about the best game on Sony’s PlayStation Portable: Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker.  Zach is currently very early in his playthrough of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, so if you’re worried about spoilers for that game, fret not. The rest of the titles in the series are all fair game, but we mainly stay focused on Big Boss related topics. 

East Coast Correspondent, Matt Giguere returns to GOTG triumphant, for he has finally gotten Chase to play the 2002 GBA classic, Metroid Fusion. We cover what goes into reviving a beloved franchise after eight years, where the series’ timeline might continue and never once make a “y can’t metroid crawl?” reference. Though we do spend a long, long time at the end discussing some of Matt and Chase’s currently played games. So if you’re up for that, you’ll get plenty of it!

Chase met Happy Badger Studio’s Carol Mertz at the St. Louis-based game festival PixelPop last month (a fact that is definitely not mentioned on this episode a few hundred times), and played her new card game, Pass The Buck: A Game of Corporate Responsibility Management. It was so fun, we brought her on to tell you about it herself. We talk about the game’s passive aggressive Facebook post origins, what it takes to run a Kickstarter campaign and the difficulties of people not reading the instructions. 

Chase and Rick are joined by the Head Designer at BlitWise Productions, Mike Welch, to discuss Pocket Tanks, a game that released well over a decade ago, and is still going strong today.  We cover the origins of Pocket Tanks and the artillery strategy genre, how Mike was ahead of the curve in terms of mobile game trends and just how it’s possible to keep updating the same game for such a long time.  And if you are aware of Pocket Tanks, you’ll understand how the screenshot below shows just how cheap Chase can be.

Josh Barnard (aka josh-shmosh) comes to GOTG to talk about his experience in modding video game hardware, specifically the Nintendo Game Boy! Josh’s newest design is a Splatoon-themed Game Boy with Jackson Pollock-esque paint splotches and a bevy of other modifications. They’re loving named SquidKids, and you can buy them right here. Chase has one, and you should too! In addition to the ins and outs of hardware mods, Josh and Chase also dissect the 1990 GB classic, Balloon Kid. And of course a discussion of Joust, Balloon Fight and even Flappy Bird happens at some point.

MIT educated, Latin enthusiast and, most important of all, the man behind Patchwork Games, Patrick Rodriguez joins the podcast to talk about his 8 Bitty Games series: a collection of eight games built to be played on the original Game Boy.  We chat about how the project got started, what challenges arise when you’re building for a piece of tech from 1989 and opine about the virtues of the oft-forgotten Game Boy Printer. Show Notes: If you’re interested in playing (and hopefully supporting) Patrick’s games, you can name your own price and download them at Patchwork Games’ itch.io page. You can also support Patrick through his Patreon. And here’s the Motherboard article about Patrick and the 8 Bitty Games project.

Pierce Courchaine returns for his fourth appearance on GOTG, this time to discuss the 4th generation of Pokemon games: Diamond & Pearl. Despite being a veteran of earlier Pocket Monster games, this is Pierce’s first time playing through a DS Pokemon game. And we decided to mix things up a bit by taking the Gym Leader challenge. What does that entail? You’ll have to listen to find out!

If it feels like forever since our last episode, that’s because it kind of has been. But no longer! GOTG is back with New York’s finest, Ty Frahm, to discuss Pokemon Conquest.  It really is a little hidden gem of the crammed DS library and well worth playing if you can stomach some inelegant menu design.  Show Notes: We struggled a good amount to paint a word picture of how Pokemon Conquest plays, so if you’re still curious, here’s some gameplay (sorry that it features a scream-y streamer)  And good news: You won’t have to wait long for another episode! As said on the podcast, a second Pokemon show will be coming within the week. That will be Pokemon Diamond with Pierce Courchaine. Look forward to that!

Doubling up on our alliterative “B” games, East Coast Correspondent Matt Giguere returns to chat about HAL Laboratory’s eShop-only puzzler, BOXBOY! Since it’s also about that time, we get into some E3 predictions/dreams. You didn’t think we could fill two hours with monochromatic puzzle game talk, did you? Show Notes: Pretty sure this story has been told before on a Kirby episode, but “HAL” being named to be one letter better than “IBM” is such a fun fact. Still time to make your futile suggestions for new fighters in Smash Bros. Here’s the ballot. Matt brings up the Kongregate game The Company of Myself as a somewhat similar experience to BOXBOY! After playing a little, I’d have to agree.  Matt always going on about Abstract Japan. Must be worth a listen, right?

The allure of free-to-play has never quite caught on with Chase, but that’s what guests are for! Potential whale (whale-in-the-making?) Parker Gibson sits down to talk about the constant cycle of invading, defending and watching cooldown timers tick away. Show Notes: After checking around, I can’t seem to find anything about what the max level is in Boom Beach. It appears upgrading your headquarters to its max level of 20 requires your account level to be in the upper 40s, but there are so many levels to so many different things, I’m really not sure. In the episode, it is mentioned Supercell is a Scandinavian company. Specifically, they are Finnish. To see more of Parker’s art, check out his Behance page.

East Coast Correspondent Matt Giguere is back to talk about the best games (handheld or not) at 2015′s PAX East in Boston. Sadly, Chase was unable to visit the show this year, so he gets to learn right along with you. We cover too many games to name individually, but there are some links in the show notes if you want to follow up on things.  Show notes: This Game Informer article covers quite a few of the games Matt and Chase discuss on the podcast. Other games to check out include Downwell and Go Plague Monkey! Go! Matt mentioned Alex Martin’s podcast, Unoriginal Soundtracks. You should listen to it. It’s a great way to both listen to new music and remind you of games you love.