This Week in Video Game History Ep 18 - May 18 - 24

Tetris, EarthBound, Link's Awakening & More | This Week in Video Game History Ep. 20

This week on This Week in Video Game History, we're covering June 1st through June 7th — a week that runs from 1984 Moscow to 2023 and hits some of the most fascinating stories in gaming along the way. On the timeline: Super Mario Bros. 2 on the Famicom Disk System — the brutally difficult Japanese sequel Nintendo of America refused to release, later rebranded as The Lost Levels. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the first handheld Zelda, born as an unauthorized side project by Nintendo developers working off-hours. EarthBound on the SNES — Shigesato Itoi's genre-defying RPG, which arrives in North America in 1995 and sets up our second deep dive perfectly. GTA San Andreas landing on Xbox and PC in 2005, bringing the Hot Coffee controversy with it. The Sims 3 rewriting the rules of PC game launches in 2009. inFamous 2 closing out Sucker Punch's PS3 era. And Street Fighter 6, one of the best fighting game launches in years — dropping on the same date as Tekken 7 did in 2017 and Diablo Immortal in 2022. Deep dives this week: the Cold War thriller behind Tetris — how Alexey Pajitnov created one of history's most important games in 1984 Soviet Moscow and didn't own a ruble of it for twelve years. The "This Game Stinks" EarthBound marketing disaster. And E3 2009's Project Natal reveal — the night Microsoft showed the world a controller-free future that half-delivered.

This Week in Video Game History Ep 19 -- May 25-31

0:00 -- Cold Open 1:40 -- Intro 2:34 -- Smash Ping Pong - May 30, 1987 3:54 -- Zero Wing - May 31, 1992 5:04 -- Tokimeki Memorial - May 27, 1994 6:20 -- The Lion King (NES) - May 25, 1995 7:48 -- Worms Armageddon - May 31, 1999 9:14 -- Mario Kart 8 -- May 29, 2014 10:25 -- Deep Dive: Dragon Quest and the Strange American Journey of the JRPG 11:50 -- Deep Dive: Splatoon and the Console That Shouldn't Have Worked 13:14 -- Deep Dive: Super Mario Bros. The Movie, and What Happens When Hollywood Doesn't Get It 14: 28 -- Outro Video Credits Smash Ping Pong (Famicom Disk System, 1987) Full Game Session -- @NenrikiGaming Zero Wing (E) - Intro Sequence [TTS] -- @Bot-ultracorp Tokimeki Memorial ~ Forever With You Opening -- @TokimekiMedia The Lion King (NES) Playthrough -- @NintendoComplete Worms Armageddon Online (WormNET) | Intermediate 3 Players -- @OldNerdPlayingOldPCGames #VideoGameHistory #GamingHistory #RetroGaming #NintendoHistory #JRPG #DragonQuest #Splatoon #MarioMovie #ThisWeekInVideoGameHistory #GamingFacts #GamingPodcast

This Week in Video Game History Ep 18 - May 18 - 24

0:00 - Cold Open 1:54 - Intro 2:50 - May 22, 1980 -- Pac-Man 4:40 - May 1980 -- Golden Axe 6:31 - May 22, 2000 -- Perfect Dark 8:34 - May 18, 2010 -- Red Dead Redemption 10:27 - May 18, 2015 -- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 12:38 - Deep Dive 1 -- Pac-Man's Cultural Invasion 14:46 - Deep Dive 2 -- CD Projekt Red: Poland's Game 16:34 - Deep Dive 3 -- The Burlingame Moment: May 24, 1972 19:05 - Outro #VideoGameHistory #GamingHistory #RetroGaming #GamingPodcast #PacMan #Witcher3 #RedDeadRedemption2 #MagnavoxOdyssey #GoldenAxe #ClassicGaming

This Week in Video Game History Ep 17 May 11 - 17

May 11th through May 17th gave us the first E3, the birth of Guilty Gear, a Japan-only Fire Emblem that never officially left the country, Skate 3's unlikely second life on YouTube, and the story of Team Bondi — the studio that built L.A. Noire's revolutionary face technology, worked itself into the ground, and was liquidated five months after shipping its only game. Plus the press release that accidentally created Counter-Strike. 00:00 -- Cold Open 02:01 -- Intro 03:06 -- Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (May 14, 1996) 04:37 -- Guilty Gear (May 14, 1998) 06:37 -- Skate 3 (May 11, 2010) 07:50 -- Invisible, Inc (May 12, 2015) 09:02 -- Injustice 2 (May 16, 2017) 10:52 -- The First E3 (May 11-13, 1995) 12:46 -- L.A. Noire and the Studio That Broke Itself (May 17, 2011) 14:42 -- The Mod that Changed Everything (May 11, 1999) 16:34 -- Outro

This Week in Video Game History Ep 16 -- May 4 - 10

Every first-person shooter you've ever played started with one shareware floppy uploaded to a BBS in May 1992. This week we're covering Wolfenstein 3D, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, EVE Online, Red Dead Revolver, Plants vs. Zombies, Prey, and Resident Evil Village — plus three deep dives: how Capcom cancelled the game that became Red Dead, why E3 2006 was the most consequential trade show in gaming history, and the literal birth of practical computing in a Cambridge basement in 1949. The week of May 4th through 10th, across gaming history. So grab your controller, and press start to continue. 0:00 - Cold open: 1949 1:41 - Theme Song 1:49 - Intro 2:51 - Timeline Intro 3:13 - Wolfenstein 3D -- May 5, 1992 5:40 - Super Mario Bros. Deluxe -- May 10, 1999 8:04 - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrows -- May 6, 2003 9:55 - EVE: Online -- May 6, 2003 12:18 - Red Dead Revolver -- May 4, 2004 14:07 - Plants vs. Zombies -- May 5, 2009 16:07 - Prey -- May 5, 2017 18:39 - Resident Evil: Village -- May 7, 2021 20:52 - Deep Dive 1: The Capcom-to-Rockstar Handoff: How Red Dead Was Almost a Capcom Game 23:47 - Deep Dive 2: E3 2006: The Most Consequential Trade Show in Gaming History 25:09 - EDSAC and the Birth of Practical Computing 27:33 - Outro New Episodes every Monday Twitch: twitch.tv/therobustone Contact: therobustone_ttv@outlook.com