The Look Back - May 2021

This is a new type of shorter episode that we'll be putting out each month, called "THE LOOK BACK!". In these, we'll be looking back at the previous month's episodes and giving you a rundown of them. That way, if you somehow missed one, you can get the low down on what you missed. Pretty handy eh?

We'd still recommend that you check out the podcast proper. And if you haven't already, then look for us on your podcatcher of choice and subscribe. It's 100% free to do so, you know.

Episode 115 - Raw With Jay: Graphics vs Gameplay

This past month - May 2021 - we put out four brand new episodes. The first episode was a Raw with Jay about Graphics vs Gameplay. You can think of the Raw with Jay episodes as either a series of rants, or things that he wants to cover outside of the rest of the show. There's nothing stopping us coming back to them, but he wants to take a whack at them first.

This episode was actually inspired by a tweet by friend of the show Jason Maddison where he had said that most gamers these days are focussing on features that Jay would call secondary, if not completely unimportant. This one tweet took Jay on a journey of wanting to ask listeners, and journos, and the majority of gamers what _THEY_ think Ray Tracing is. According to them it's a super important part of the gaming experience, right?

Pro tip: it's not.

So Jay spent this episode outlining why he thinks that, whilst graphics can be impressive, they aren't required in order to enjoy a gaming experience.

Episode 116 Catching Up With The B - Part One

Next was a two part discussion with The_B. We'd felt that it had been a _very_ long time since we'd had The_B on the show - in fact, it had only been a few months, as his last appearance was in January. In this first part of our conversation with him, we wanted to find out what he had been playing recently; and he delivered in spades. In those 50 minutes, we mentioned 25 games in total - most of which aren't the games he'd been playing, but they are related.

Other things that we covered were the fact that we're now two years into the launches of the  PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, the so called CMOS "timebomb" which is present in all of Sony's consoles from the PSP and PS3 onwards. And of course, we talk about Nightdive's Shadow Man remaster.

One of my favourite parts of the episode was when The_B started talking about '90s TV adverts and said "REMEMBER GAME GEAR'S MAN!" Nothing like a bit of "old man yelling at cloud" to brighten your day.

Episode 117 Catching Up With The B - Part Two

While part one of our catch-up with The_B was all about what he had been playing recently, part two was almost dominated by talk of Nightdive Studios. We started by talking about what happened when Acclaim went belly up and this inspired me to come up with a completely new segment as we were recording:

This reminded Jay of the story of the original source code for Prince of Persia being found in a garage, and how it took months to read the data off of the floppy discs. This, he reckons, will happen more and more over the next few years because games devs in the '80s and '90s weren't terribly great about keeping the source code for their games safe. Which lead to us trying to figure out how Nightdive keep finding the source code for the games that they remaster.

The discussion on which games Nightdive should remaster next lead to The_B setting us up and knocking us down within one sentence: Nightdive haven't done anything with The Operative: No One Lives Forever (aka NOLF) and me asking whether Cate Archer is a Disney Princess now.

One of my favourite parts of the episode was when I stole all of The_B's ideas for Nightdive Studios remasters. Seriously, I listed all the games that he was going to mention before he had the chance.

Coming up This Month

We thought we'd give a little teaser on what's coming up this next month (June 2021); you heard it here first.

We have another Raw with Jay, but we're keeping the topic close to our chests at the moment. You'll have to subscribe (FOR FREE!) so that you don't miss it. After that, Squidge brings back a previously used segment for his first solo episode - that's right, Squidge has a solo episode.

And after both of those episodes, The_B joins us again; this time we talk about the fact that 2021 saw the Tomb Raider series hit 25 years old. Tomb Raider was arguably one of the biggest games of the '90s, and we wanted to pay homage to Lara Croft's adventures by discussing our favourites in the series. We also have some amazing artwork for this episode by twitter user MAD-C, and we cannot wait for you all to see it.

We think you'll agree that this coming month's episodes are looking and sounding great. Keep an eye on the podcast feed, or our YouTube channel for the trailers when they drop.

Wrapping Up

So that's what we put out in May. Keep an eye open for more of these retrospective episodes each month, that way you'll know about the episodes that you may have missed.

Music Credits

All music included in this episode is fully licensed and remains copyright of their creators/publishers. The music used was (in order of appearance):

• Abstract Vision #6 by Muz Station Productions
• Casual Arcade Track #3 Muz Station Productions
• Among The Stars by Muz Station Productions
• Breath Deep Breath Clear (Wu Chi) by Siobhan Dakay
• I N e e d Y o u 私の側て by G.H (removed from BandCamp)

Did you catch all of our episodes in May? Which was your favourite? Do you have any favourite moments? Do YOU remember Game Gears?Did you stick around and listen to the bloopers? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, or try our brand new contact page.

And have you left us a rating or review? We really like to hear back from listeners about our show, so check out https://wafflingtaylors.rocks/our-podcast/ for links to services where you can leave us some wonderful feedback.

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