My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin
In My Perfect Console, Simon Parkin, award-winning author video game critic for The Observer invites well-known guests from the worlds of gaming, film and television, music, comedy and more to pick the five video games they would like to immortalise on a fictional games machine. They discuss those five games in chronological order of release, interspersed with biographical chat about the guest’s life and career –– a lens that often leads to new and unexpected insights.
"Thoroughly modern and ahead of its time...a gift." - NEW YORK'S VULTURE
"Charming, insightful." -- THE GUARDIAN
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- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 70 minutes
- Episodes
- 152
- Years Active
- 2023 - 2025
Susan Calman, comic, writer, presenter.
My guest today is the Scottish comedian, television presenter and writer, Susan Calman. While studying law at the University of Glasgow, she spent three months in North Carolina working with criminal…
Henk Rogers, the man who sold Tetris.
My guest today is the Dutch video game designer and entrepreneur, Henk Rogers. While a student at the University of Hawaii, he’d while away the hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. Af…
Jake Solomon, game designer (Marvel’s Midnight Suns; XCOM: Enemy Unknown.)
My guest today is the American designer of some of the finest strategy video games yet made. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Computer Science in 2000, he accepted a …
Phil Wang, comedian.
My guest today is the British-Malaysian stand-up comedian and comedy writer Phil Wang. Born in the UK, when he was one week old his parents moved to Malaysia, where he attended school until the age o…
Shahid Ahmad, former director, Sony PlayStation.
Shahid Ahmad was a schoolboy living on a London council estate when he sold his prized BMX bike to raise money for programming books and taught himself to write computer games. After several knock-ba…
Phil Fish, creator of Fez.
My guest today is the reclusive designer of one of the greatest video games yet made. He studied game design in Montreal and, after a brief stint working at Ubisoft, left to begin work on a game of h…
Heather Anne Campbell, comedian, screenwriter (Rick and Morty).
My guest today is an Emmy-nominated writer, sketch comedian, voice actor and performer. As a teenager she studied improv comedy at the famous ImprovOlympic studio in her home city of Chicago, trainin…
Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress.
My guest today is the American co-creator of one of the longest-running and most popular independent games yet made. In high school he and his older brother Zach designed adventure games based on fan…
Dara Ó Briain, comedian.
My guest today is a stand-up comedian, television presenter and Irish national treasure. He studied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at University College, Dublin, where during a debate, he cracke…
Ashly Burch, actor (Mythic Quest, The Last of Us, Horizon).
[Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of addiction to prescription pain medication and fatal overdose.]
My guest today is an American writer and performer who stars in Apple TV’s Mythic Q…
Josh Wardle, creator of Wordle.
My guest today is a software engineer who, in 2021, released a word game that soon became a global obsession. He grew up in a Welsh farming village, attended the Royal Holloway University, then moved…
Trailer
Welcome to My Perfect Console with author, New Yorker journalist and The Observer's video game critic, Simon Parkin.
Each week a guest picks the five video games they would like to immortalise on thei…