Super Nintendo Explorer Squad - podcast casting call

Output Podcast Bonus Round
1

NEW INFO: The first game will be Soul Blazer/Soul Blader! Here’s the Doodle sign up:

https://beta.doodle.com/poll/enhsbtahy33i5aqx#table

I’ve chunked it out into two hour blocks on the weekend of the 13th. I’d like to nail a time down pretty soon so we know who can participate and who can’t - that way it’s not a situation where you played the game but can’t be on the podcast. So please sign up as soon as possible! And sign up for as many slots as you’re available!

I’m going to leave this as open as possible since it’s really just a pilot, so if we have 8 people and it’s a total mess…who cares? If there’s too much demand, I might find some way to limit it to only 4 people going forward but I’ll try and be fair about it.

And here’s the link for where we will be recording, for posterity: https://app.zencastr.com/virtualclint/snexploration-squad-episode-0

I will post that again closer to the recording time.

I put together a zip file with SNES9X and the US ROM for Soul Blazer. I took the liberty of changing the video settings to look more like a TV because…I’m like that I guess.

EDITED OUT THANKS TULPA

By default, it’s set up for the keyboard, but there’s also an Xbox 360 config file in there. Just delete “snes9x.conf” and rename “snes9x xbox360.conf” to the original file’s name. Might save someone some time.

-------OLD POST-------

This is a podcast idea I floated, like, 6 months ago, but now seems to be the time for me to Get Things Done!

High level: Select SNES games at random and play them for at least 1 hour. Talk about it after in the classic Select Button meandering nonsense style.

Ideally, I’d like to record this once every two weeks over the weekend. I figure that folks could sign up when they please - I don’t feel like a consistent cast is important.

Eschewing a standard rating system, we would cover these 5 categories and assign them an arbitrary numeric score:

Mystery
Poetry
Grandeur
Gun
Harmony

In the interest of keeping the podcast fairly interesting, I’d love for people to take notes on these (purposefully vague) subjects, especially any poetic imagery or words. I want to straddle the line between goofy video game podcast and actually describing games in unexpected ways.

So, who’s interested? I’d like to record a pilot on the weekend of May 13th. I’ll of course be doing any editing, technical setup, uploading, publicity, etc. Also, any ideas about how to make the podcast more interesting, weirder, or funnier are welcome.

Disclaimer: If lightning strikes and this becomes some sort of world famous podcast, I’ll start paying people to appear on it. But in all likelihood, this will be a passion project for now and ever. I can’t really imagine it going anywhere except a close circle of friends, but I figured I’d mention it.

EDIT: added the randomized list above
EDIT 2: posted the doodle signup and recording link

9 Likes
2

Sounds hip, would LIKE to be on it…
Only (truly) own
Super Mario World
And
Uber Street Fighter II

3

Not sure how eligible I am for this, but I’m down to talk about some of my favorite SNES games. Some of those I own and enjoy are Gradius III, Star Fox, Super Metroid

4

I was a sega child so a good chunk of the snes catalogue is a mystery to me. This is an interesting framework for thinking about games. I’d love to be involved :slight_smile:

Would we be picking one game per episode for everyone to play or would everyone in the cast be playing something different each episode?

5

make sure you talk about:

  • Umihara Kawase
  • Kirby’s Dream Course
  • the oppressiveness of every major title shipping with battery saves for the first time
  • Nintendo’s cutthroat business practices when the entire rest of the industry was conspiring to displace them
  • ZSNES
1 Like
6

In the past I have tried (and failed) to run a vidcon “book club”, so consider me interested in this.

7

Heck yeeah, i’m down

8

me too

9

Oh god this sounds so awesome

Cannot guarantee consistent participation but sign me up, periodically and unpredictably

10

This is a really good pitch.

11

This sounds rad, sign me up

1 Like
12

I can’t confirm frequent participation, but I wanna get in on this real bad. Love the categories of analysis. This sounds awesome.

13

Alright! Sounds like we can get something started! I’m going to set up a doodle schedule tomorrow and we can nail down a time. In the meantime I’ve randomized a list of SNES games : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_1uZIiOxOnMH-xaFem3dKdjJFDlLMo1mL1fcMxkwf38/edit?usp=drivesdk

The first game will be Soul Blazer so that should be interesting

14

Quick question, though. If we’re trying to make for better discussion by removing numerical scores, wouldn’t applying scores to the “Gun, Grandeur, etc” points be similarly problematic? Scores are a lazy shortcut, so I’d worry about falling back on saying things like “I played a bit of this game. 3 out of 4 Mystery.”

Would it be good to incorporate ABDN style taglines into this? What with those being a sort of poetry in themselves.

15

ABDN also had the star ratings. The ratings are great because they are evocative of something but objectively meaningless.

16

STILL INTERESTED.

What was that game you nominated last time? That was pretty cool. (edit: Cu-On-Pa) (edit: Oooo, nice credits)

17

Everyone must use their own scale based on those categories imo. I score this game 2800+9 walnuts for gun, for example.

1 Like
18

That’s true, though I always viewed the SB-borne ABDN reviews as not needing the stars. In the context of a longer review, it worked because it saved time on a reread, but in the context of a tagline, I liked the occasional guesswork of figuring out if a statement was positive or negative. You get the full “review” in the tagline, and the rest is the mental exercise of interpreting what that might mean.

I begrudgingly reference ProJared’s metaphor scores. They’re not very cerebral, but they are at least more interesting than a fraction.

19

I give all games a 5 but bad gun is 5 out of 100 and good gun is 5 out of 5

2 Likes
20

The only appropriate way to grade this:

‘Yes’ out of ‘Gun’
‘No’ out of ‘Gun’

3 Likes