Hey podcast listeners!
Welcome to dispatch #6 of Video Game Podcasts! If youâre receiving this via email, thank you for letting me in your inbox. If youâre reading this on the web, go subscribe already. Itâs free!
Weâre getting weird this week. Letâs dive into one of my personal favorites, Fringe Game History Podcast.
Thanks for being here,
Tom
You might likeâŚ
Fringe Game History Podcast
Hereâs the deal⌠not all video game podcasts have to be weekly/bi-weekly on-going productions.
In my quest to discover remarkable video game shows, I often venture to the outskirts of iTunes top 200. To the fringe, if you will.
Fringe Game History Podcast is a gaming history podcast like no other. It has six episodes. Thatâs it.
Very similar to niche documentary series on Netflix, like The Toys That Made Us, Fringe Game History doesnât feel like itâs meant to be a serialized, weekly, never-ending exploration of video games.
Itâs more of a self-contained project, a glimpse into some of the weirdest games youâve never heard of, the lives of the people that made them, and lost sub-communities and eras of video game development that they occupied.
Runtime?
Episodes are typically between 60 and 90 minutes.
Who hosts it?
Fringe Game History is hosted by Jeremy Penner, who also maintains other weird game projects like Glorious Trainwrecks and a hilarious Tumblr Consult Your Color Wheel.
Youâll get to know Jeremy a bit throughout the episodes, but the focus is very much on his guests and their unique stories.
Whatâs the format?
Itâs an interview show! Jeremy brings on one guest per episode, and after a brief introduction, they delve into their personal history of making fringe games. Youâll be transported back to a world of BBS (online bulletin boards), forum-based communities, and primitive file sharing.
Youâll learn about some of the developersâ earliest games, like Alien Zit, a title spun up from a couple of 11 year olds, to Toad Strikes Back, a popular Mario fan game.
Youâll hear tales of the RPG Maker community, and the early days of the Allegro game dev library. Itâs likely unfamiliar territory for most of us.
So, yeah! Fringe games.
Whatâs so special about that?
Hereâs what I think youâll dig the most:
đ Itâs easy to binge the fringeâŚ
I really enjoy this format for a podcast. Itâs important content that needs to exist, and itâs not a long-term investment for listeners. You can easily binge the fringe in 2-3 days.
This show illustrates that podcasts donât need to be weekly to âwork.â Thereâs no focus on download numbers, growing a Patreon sum, getting 5-star reviews, or scrambling to get anything out week after week.
All that said, the showâs not over! Jeremy let me know that a new round of interviews could be released later this year.
đŽ Itâs really fascinatingâŚ
Iâm old enough to remember âweb 1.0,â or whatever. I grew up on very static message and bulletin boards. I remember loading games from floppy disks, downloading random .zip games from sites, and stumbling upon some weird ones.
I really enjoyed learning from Jeremyâs guests, and hearing how early homebrew and fan games were developed. It was also fascinating to learn how these hobbies manifested themselves into various future full-time jobs, or passion projects.đŁď¸ Great interviewer/interviewee dynamic.
Jeremy is really good at this. Each conversation feels natural, and never forced. These guests arenât traditional âcelebritiesâ in gaming. I wouldnât expect any of them to have an extensive background of being interviewed, but the audio quality is top notch and the casualness of the dialogue makes for a very professional and enjoyable experience.
What do others say about it?
Thereâs a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts! (Okay, okay, itâs only from only 2 reviews.)
Might as well post them both!
Hereâs the first from âLE Mâ
âââââ âThoughtful interviewsâ
I love how this podcast peers into little-known, insular communities and finds the intense creativity and community-building going on inside them. Amazing work.
â
This one is amazing, from âVoygaâ
âââââ âYesâ
Oh yes.
Now I feel bad I havenât written a review yet.
Is it kid-friendly?
It is for the most part, but I canât recall 100%! (Note: You might not care about this⌠I typically donât, to be honest, but Iâm on an epic quest to find podcasts that I can reliably listen to with my kids in the car!)
Final thoughts?
Fringe Game History is unique in all the right ways. Itâs a direct and self-contained project. The conversations between Jeremy and the guests and entertaining and informative, and I learned a ton about pockets of old game development that I never knew existed.
If you like mainstream history podcasts like Retronauts, youâll feel at home here. If your flavor of video game podcasts is solely âgive me the news by a couple of dudes bantering in between,â (and thatâs totally fine,) this likely isnât the show for you.
But who knows? Only one way to find out. đ§
Where to listen? Whatâs a good starting point?
Episode one, my friends. Itâs easy to start at the beginning, though Iâll throw in my personal favorite is episode two with Phil Salvador.
đ Here are your links:
Spotify (not on Spotify)
Stitcher (not on Stitcher)
Do you already listen to Fringe Game History Podcast? Have you checked it out after reading this? Love it? Hate it? Let me know your feedback!
Random Spotlight: Xbox Live Indie Games
Okay, not really a podcast, but yâall watch YouTube, right?
I was scrolling through Jeremyâs twitter feed real quick and caught this gem:
This YouTube channel is ridiculous. If you lived through the era of downloading those early games on Xbox 360, youâll appreciate paging through some of these videos.
Did you know someone released a Wikipedia app for Xbox!? I didnât.
Reader Recommendations
Send them to me! If youâre an email subscriber, hit reply and let me know what youâre listening to. If youâre reading on the web, email me: tom@videogamepodcasts.com.
This week, I have a reader recommendation from Elliot, who wrote in to recommend his own show, Wall Pull! (Itâs cool. That counts as a podcast recommendation!)
Itâs a âthree guys talkingâ type of podcast centered around the release of World of Warcraft Classic! I gave one episode a listen and if your into this style of show and WoW, itâs worth giving a spin to see if you click with Elliot, Frankie, and Brody!
Hereâs the link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wall-pull/id1476936488
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