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Episode 299: Premature Evacuation

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Jonathan Metts - July 29, 2012, 8:30 pm EDT
Total comments: 29

Think we'd take it easy the week before a big anniversary? Nope! An old friend returns to help us blast through tons of new games and some great emails.

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With Guillaume tied up in vacations and visitors, we welcome back old friend Greg Leahy, not only as a familiar voice but also as pinch podcast editor in our time of need! Our special guest kicks off New Business with the surprisingly expansive Wario Land II (coming eventually to 3DS Virtual Console worldwide), several different flavors of video pinball, and the bizarre circumstances of his PSP acquisition and the masochistic game he found for it. Jon follows up with his own PSP entry, this one the acclaimed Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, a game about tying balloons to soldiers so they float away to become your servants. Jonny brings his 16-bit RPG love to Penny Arcade's On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 3, with a mild warning for casual fans of the web comic. He also checks out the psychadelic DYAD for PlayStation Network and an odd interactive story (game?) called Dear Esther. James is last but not least with an update for Tales of the Abyss, plus his recent Steam purchases including Frozen Synapse and Star Wars: Republic Commando.

We lost James to a power outage during the break, but he found enough potatoes to jump the breaker box and get back onto the show partially into the second segment. The rest of us press on with your fantastic letters about 3DS police report strategies, expectations for widespread digital releases after NSMB2, and the pros/cons of the Steam Sale model for Nintendo's own platforms. Please do your part to keep that stream of ideas and questions flowing! And while we're singularly focused on the podcast milestone for the next week or so, we haven't forgotten about RetroActive -- keep contributing to that official forum thread for Wario Land 4 because we'll get into the feature quite soon!

This podcast was edited by Greg Leahy.

Music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is used with permission from Jason Ricci & New Blood. You can purchase their newest album, Done with the Devil, directly from the record label, Amazon (CD) (MP3), or iTunes, or call your local record store and ask for it!

Additional music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is copyrighted to Nintendo and Konami, and is included under fair use protection.

Talkback

Glad0sJuly 29, 2012

Greg! WOOOOOOOOOOO!

My reaction when I heard the ahoyhoy being done right (read: not by me):

http://dc340.4shared.com/img/2pldL6EH/s7/CerealSpitting.png

broodwarsJuly 30, 2012

Thanks for the compliments, Jonny, on our first crack at Nintendo Free Radio!  :D  We've actually been doing a lot of talking lately about whether this is something we're going to continue to do, and it looks like we will but we've been collecting feedback on the community.  We wanted to make sure first if more NFR is something that folks here would want, because as you know these things take a lot of time and energy to put together.  Well, now that you've gone and given your official stamp of approval on RFN, I don't know how we can say "no" now.  ;)

Scatt-ManJuly 30, 2012

*Quickly covers dozens of portraits of what I assume to be Greg hanging all over my house.* Oh, Greg! I wasn't expecti-I KNEW YOU'D COME BACK! I JUST KNEW IT! NOW WE CAN *maniacal laughter*

Hey Einstein!July 30, 2012

Quote from: Glad0s

Greg! WOOOOOOOOOOO!

ECHOED

Pixelated PixiesJuly 30, 2012

I'm still on world 2 of Warioland II and haven't unlocked any secret exits yet, but already I'm getting a sense that this game is just packed with content. I was able to get an idea of how many 'main' levels there are based on those gold bars I had not yet unlocked, and even then I thought 'Wow, this game is pretty big'. So you can imagine my surprise to hear you guys talk about there being even more content once the main game has been beaten! This game seems to be crazy good value given the amount of gameplay that's been packed into it.

Glad0sJuly 30, 2012

Man....I completely missed the Steam sale. Dear Esther sounds right up my alley, but I just can't spend 10 bucks on a roughly 2 hour experience. If it ever goes on sale again, I'm snatching it up. Also, that was probably the most pinball-rific discussion I've ever heard on a gaming podcast.

HellsAttackJuly 30, 2012

Having Greg back this week was great. If he would keep coming back once or twice every other month or so that'd be enough to get me by. His presence on the show is missed and I'd really look forward to bimonthly Leahy editions.

I also wanted to thank James for bringing up Republic Commando. It's one of my favorite games of all time. I remember when it first came out, I marathoned the entire game (8 hours) only stopping to eat dinner. I was hyped for months because of the demo they released on another game. I went on to read all four of the books. There was a lot of interesting drama surrounding the author, Karen Traviss, and Lucasarts at the time the Imperial Commando book came out. Basically Lucasarts wanted to bring the Mandalorians in a different direction with Star Wars: The Clone Wars and they declared essentially all Republic Commando content non-cannonical.

RWJuly 30, 2012

My how I've missed the dry Britsh-wit!

Disco StuJuly 30, 2012

I really wish I could participate in the Retroactive, my favorite local games store even has a used copy of Wario Land 4 in stock according to their website!  But I sold off my DS Lite last year.... :(.  Either way, it was fantastic to hear Greg again and I can't wait for RFN Part CCC!

Fiendlord_TimmayJuly 30, 2012

GREEEEEEEG!!!!! This seriously made my day. :D

Also, I've got you all (the podcast crew at least) beat on the Steam sale. This was my first one so I went pretty nuts. Spent just over $100 and got 35 games with all dlc and expansions included. A $416 value for $100. This is why I love Steam.

I was so upset I missed the New Playing segment. I wrote such a pointed script.

Pixelated PixiesJuly 31, 2012

I picked up a handful of stuff during the steam sale as well, many of which I've already burned through. I got Super Brothers: Swords & Sworcery (which is an awesome game to play on a lazy saturday morning), Limbo (which was fun albiet short), Plants vs. Zombies (a fun little time killer), Braid (I'm not really digging it so far), Nightsky (I finally broke down. I waited too long for it to come to a Nintendo platform), Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (an awesome little Metroid inspired game mared by a handful of physics puzzles), and Bastion (which I've yet to put any significant time into). Along with those I picked up a few games which I have no intention of playing, but overall a pretty good haul.

PlugabugzJuly 31, 2012

Greg did you mean that furniture store in Croydon that was burned down last year in the riots?

I love it when my listener mail gets read  ;D .

James, Xbox 360 is a blind spot of mine (I don't own one), so please forgive my sin of not knowing they have daily deals and other sales promotions consistently.

One thing I didn't mention as well (and I don't recall hearing of on the podcast) is the benefit to publishers by offering an older game of a series on sale.  I bought Trine 1 a year ago on the steam Xmas sale for extremely cheap, and loved it so much that I bought Trine 2 the month it came out.  Because their original game was so good, it made me perk my ears up a bit when I heard of a sequel incoming, and I broke my usual rule of waiting for a discount to purchase a game.

The discount debate reminds me a bit of the used sales market arguments.  Publishers sometimes are so anti-used game sales, but if I hadn't purchased inFamous for $15 used and loved it, I wouldn't have bothered getting inFamous 2 at release.  I guess I sometimes see Nintendo in the same light of being so afraid of what they don't know, instead of experimenting and determining what drives these successes.

CericJuly 31, 2012

Quote from: lolmonade

...
The discount debate reminds me a bit of the used sales market arguments.  Publishers sometimes are so anti-used game sales, but if I hadn't purchased inFamous for $15 used and loved it, I wouldn't have bothered getting inFamous 2 at release.  I guess I sometimes see Nintendo in the same light of being so afraid of what they don't know, instead of experimenting and determining what drives these successes.

The Big Argument I make here is that the Sales in and of themselves are better for the publisher because they'll at least get a cut of that $15.  It really is a win in the digital space to have sales on slightly past there prime games.

Quote from: Ceric

Quote from: lolmonade

...
The discount debate reminds me a bit of the used sales market arguments.  Publishers sometimes are so anti-used game sales, but if I hadn't purchased inFamous for $15 used and loved it, I wouldn't have bothered getting inFamous 2 at release.  I guess I sometimes see Nintendo in the same light of being so afraid of what they don't know, instead of experimenting and determining what drives these successes.

The Big Argument I make here is that the Sales in and off themselves are better for the publisher because they'll at least get a cut of that $15.  It really is a win in the digital space to have sales on slightly past there prime games.


I definitely agree with the notion that sales are better for publishers.  In fact, before I wrote the above, I was going to say as a comparison that if they really want to cut used sales off at the knees, they should offer temporary sales on new games a la steam sales. 

My only point is that used-sales isn't exactly the demon some publishers make them out to be, either.  Granted, buying a used copy of a game has also disuaded me from buying a sequel as well if I thought the original wasn't a very enjoyable game.

Do_WhatJuly 31, 2012

What some publishers need to realize is that there are people who are simply not going to pay $60 or more for a retail console game or $40+ for a boxed 3DS game. Usually these people don't hang out on forums or engage in a bunch of gaming discussion, but they are out there. (I'm one of them). I am super more than content to wait until a year or two after release to play a game. I always end up spending $60+ during Steam sales because I'll get a bunch of games. I love playing video games, I just don't like paying a lot of money to do it.


I used to almost exclusively buy used games. It wasn't because I hated the industry, it was because I didn't have the money to spend $50 on ever new release game I wanted. Instead I would spend $20-$30 on the big game I wanted a year ago. At least with Steam the publishers/developers get a piece of that pie if they're willing to price games where I'm willing to pay for them.


Republic Commando is absolutely a great game. It's easily my favorite non Metroid FPS.
Also, Halo 4 has Space Pirates, so that is super enticing.

KDR_11kJuly 31, 2012

Valve has stated that the sales boost from a temporary sale keeps going even after the price returns to normal. Also new games don't get discounted much in the Steam sales, it's mostly the games that are a bit older and have already lost some value at retail.

I guess James got bombarded with recommendations for Space Chem after declaring that he likes solving programming-like problems in games. There's also the flash game Manufactoria which is a bit short but great fun (and apparently really confusing to non-programmers), as the game progresses you basically get put in control of a Turing Machine.

KDR_11kJuly 31, 2012

The summer indie bundles are back for a few days!
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/summer_indie_bundle

ZabeMusicJuly 31, 2012

I've just realised how egotistical Greg is. Read the description and remind yourself he wrote it.

Quote from: ZabeMusic

I've just realised how egotistical Greg is. Read the description and remind yourself he wrote it.

Actually, Jonny writes the descriptions.

CobraJSFJuly 31, 2012

This was probably the highlight of my week. Does this mean we get to hear Greg two weeks in a row?!


Also, I am impressed at how little James managed to spend on so much.

Quote from: Plugabugz

Greg did you mean that furniture store in Croydon that was burned down last year in the riots?

That's the one I was thinking of, so probably.

I almost always write the podcast articles, unless I'm out for the week. It lists Greg first due to a website quirk that uses alphabetical order (by first name) whenever there are multiple authors for a page.

randomflashbangAugust 01, 2012

Leahy is a tease, and I demand DEMAND follow up on his play through of Deadly Premonitions.

Pixelated PixiesAugust 01, 2012

Quote from: randomflashbang

Leahy is a tease, and I demand DEMAND follow up on his play through of Deadly Premonitions.


This.

I'd love to hear his take on that steaming pile of crazy.

But yes, Greg is an insufferable, egotistical bastard.

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