Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Rise and Fall of E3: From Leaky CES Tent to Digital Extinction
Episode 11227
In May 1995, a Sony executive walked to a microphone, said $299, and walked off, undercutting Sega's $399 Saturn and cementing a brand-new trade show…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Hironobu Sakaguchi: Final Fantasy, Grief and a $137 Million Failure
Episode 11226
Hironobu Sakaguchi wanted to be a musician. He nearly got expelled from high school for selling bootleg concert tickets, and he joined a brand-new st…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Polybius: Anatomy of the Arcade Urban Legend That Never Existed
Episode 11225
The legend says an unnamed black arcade cabinet appeared in Portland, Oregon in 1981, induced seizures, amnesia and night terrors, and was serviced b…
2 days, 9 hours ago
The Pokemon Shock: How a Four-Second Flash Sent 685 Kids to Hospitals
Episode 11224
On Tuesday, December 16, 1997 at 6:51 PM, roughly 4.6 million Japanese households watching episode 38 of Pokemon, Dennou Senshi Porygon, saw Pikachu'…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Masahiro Sakurai and the Grueling Making of Super Smash Bros.
Episode 11223
Masahiro Sakurai built the best-selling fighting game franchise in history partly because he found fighting games too inaccessible. This episode trac…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Missile Command: Dave Theurer's Cold War Nightmares at Atari
Episode 11222
In 1980, Atari coin-op president Gene Lipkin tore a photo of a radar screen out of a magazine and told his team to build a game that looked like it. …
2 days, 9 hours ago
Toru Iwatani: The Pac-Man Creator Who Never Got a Bonus
Episode 11221
Toru Iwatani created Pac-Man, one of the most recognizable pieces of intellectual property in history, and received no bonus, no royalties and no equ…
2 days, 9 hours ago
id Software: From a Rejected Mario Demo to Doom, Quake and Microsoft
Episode 11220
In 1990, a group of programmers moonlighting at Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana replicated the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 on a PC using Joh…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Flappy Bird: Why Dong Nguyen Deleted a $50,000-a-Day Game
Episode 11219
In February 2014, a 28-year-old programmer in Vietnam was earning an estimated $50,000 a day from banner ads in a game he built in two or three days.…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Chris Sawyer and RollerCoaster Tycoon: One Coder's Assembly Masterpiece
Episode 11218
Chris Sawyer, an elusive Scottish programmer, built one of the most iconic management simulations in history almost entirely alone, writing about 99 …
2 days, 9 hours ago