The debut episode of the Secret Cave podcast marks the first of many discussions between our writers that will be edited into neat little audio files for your enjoyment.
We give you an introduction to the kinds of content you can expect to find on Secret Cave, then dive into discussion about Star Trek, Donnie Darko, and stories in video games.
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We’ll also be announcing episodes on Twitter, and streaming them on Twitch.
? in this episode, we discuss:
- What you can expect from the Secret Cave podcast
- Star Trek’s fascination with shoehorning in painful love interests for Kirk
- Why Enterprise’s theme tune writers should take it being called ‘shite’ as a complement
- How some of Star Trek’s best episodes came from budget constraints
- Why Donnie Darko is commonly misunderstood
- The appeal of films set in the American suburbs
- Does lack of story make games shit?
- Why Mario makes a statement by having an anti-story
- Character and story development in Portal
- Portal’s ties to the Half Life universe
- Do developers rely on storyline as crutch for poor gameplay?
- The differences in gameplay between Japanese and Western games
- Frustrating menus in ’90s RPGs
- The strange artifacts Western culture has inherited from Japan
- Why Rayman is dressed in white in Japan
? links mentioned:
- Bird of the Week
- Star Trek: The Original Series
- Star Trek: Enterprise
- Where My Heart Will Take Me
- Unexpected (Enterprise episode)
- Spectre of the Gun (TOS episode)
- Miri (TOS episode)
- Donnie Darko
- Donnie Darko, Review by Lee Tyrrell
- David Lynch
- The ‘Burbs
- Maddox: Things I hate about modern gaming: stories.
- Maddox on Storylines in Games (video)
- Tetris
- Super Mario Bros.
- Portal
- Final Fantasy VII
- What UX Designers Can Learn from ’90s Japanese Video Games
- Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee
- Rayman’s different colors in the Japanese release (image)
- A History of Emojis
- The Strange World of Emoji as a Second Language
Music credit: Nuclear Winter — Baby Mawson
