Cartoonist and journalist Dami Lee joins Brandon Sheffield’s Insert Credit Video Game Discourse Hour to cover E3, eating Dizzy, and Purse Owner 5. Original music by Kurt Feldman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3IvXBhb4LI
**Questions this week:**
1. From Frank Cifaldi: What’s up with E3? (03:47)
2. How is the Korean video game industry different from other parts of the industry? (09:45)
3. What are the biggest headaches in the world of video game translation and localization? (14:38)
4. What’s the ugliest video game hardware you’ve ever seen? (19:42)
5. What video game eggs would make the best omelettes? (24:13)
6. Dirtbag Kory asks: How do you define the Japanese use of the word ‘gear’? (29:45)
7. Which two game industry figures have never worked together, but really should? (34:51)
8. Design a 90’s Master System clone. (39:34)
9. Is there such a thing as a good webcomic about video games? (44:14)
10. Who is the Nathan Fielder of video games? (48:35)
**LIGHTNING ROUND**: Name Design – Dame Judi (52:45)
**Recommendations:** **Brandon:**[The Happiness of the Katakuris](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304262/) (2001), [Evil Dead Trap 2](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203132/) (1992) if you have a strong stomach, [Oh, DEER! Soundtrack](https://motohirokawashima.bandcamp.com/album/oh-deer-original-soundtrack) **Frank**: [A Forensic Analysis of Earthbound's Deepest Secrets](https://gamehistory.org/earthbound-script-files/), [The Video Game History Hour](https://gamehistory.org/the-video-game-history-hour/) **Dami**: [Trick](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335762/), [Vincenzo](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13433812/)
### [Don't miss our watchalong for the Morton Jankel Cut of the Super Mario Bros movie, Friday June 18th at 6:30p/9:30e!](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/875-super-mario-bros-movie-the-morton-jankel-cut-watchalong)
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On the gang's point re: Neopets being strangely uncharted territory for the podcast, one game from around this era that I've just never heard anyone really talk about ever is Runescape. I realise perhaps it wouldn't be a game that any of these hosts would ever play, but was it not as popular in the US as it was in Australia/Europe? It was such a massive part of my pre-teen gaming experience and I find it to be a fascinating artifact of that era. Surely it that must have had some influence on other western MMOs. Obviously I'm aware it still has a following and is active, but I just never hear it referenced in conversations surrounding the history of MMORPGs.
Did anyone else play the heck out of this between the ages of 9 and 12?
@“pasquinelli”#p34051 Wow! It‘s somehow both industrial and ultrasleek at the same time. Honestly, I don’t get all this hate for console design this episode! FZ-1 3DO?? Stately! Dignified! Sega Master System? Red and black! That amazing little pointless diagram! PS5? Ok, you got me there…that headless vampire banana was a mistake.
Fantastic episode and fantastic guest this week! I swear I‘m not just saying that because you dredged up that random question I dashed off forever ago lol. Thanks for fielding it–I’m so fascinated by loan words and how they really take on their own lives in the languages that adopt them. “Gear” is a funny example because the English-speaking world (or at least this little niche of it) has now re-adopted it imbued with it‘s new meaning to the point where we don’t even bat an eye when it‘s used to refer to a colossal walking nuclear weapon! Fascinating! I’m sure some of the more linguistically well-read members of the forum would have some additional input.
Put SWERY on the mic for creative control, and put someone with the resources on the other end. SWERY x SUDA51, SWERY x Shigesato Itoi, SWERY x Keita Takahashi, SWERY x anybody really
“Hack-and-slash” is one of the more irritating wasei-eigo in that it can mean either “any action game with bladed-weapon combat” or “any vaguely Diablo-ish game”, but I‘m not sure it even counts because it’s not as if the English application of the term is particularly informative, anyway.
@“Gaagaagiins”#p34040 it's mostly just us not knowing anything about it. Sorry!
@therealdadsy runescape was indeed not as popular in the US - I didn't know about it until I joined game developer magazine and learned it was still going strong in 2005 of whatever. It's certainly interesting!
@“exodus”#p34073 I‘d love to do some digging to understand why it was such a hit here in Australia. I’d say most of my childhood friends played it. It was discussed in the primary school playground between many different groups of kids; gamer and non-gamer types alike. I think the only other real collective gaming experience my direct peers may of had simultaneously would have been Pokemon a few years earlier. But there was a cartoon and trading cards and was largely inescaapable in comparison. Wild stuff.
Yeah, I definitely recall it coming up a lot in the early/mid-'00s with people who play games otherwise—I was in high school then and it was the game everyone was sneaking into the computer lab to spend time with. I suspect it was probably more popular in lower-income regions and/or regions with poor internet infrastructure, and AFAIK the existing player base is overwhelmingly people who started playing ~ 20 years ago and never moved on, without a lot of newcomers.
It's a little oblique but I suppose my first paid games writing gig came thanks to Runescape: some lady wrote a massive op-ed to my local paper at the time that was meant to be a general warning about the dangers of internet addiction but was actually just an unrelatable, TMI-laden and quite demeaning account of her teenage son's time spent with Runescape, and so someone I knew from the paper paid me some money to a) explain what the hell she was talking about and whether any of it was credible, and b) whittle it down to something printable.
We definitely had a major Runescape boom in my elementary school in Canada around 2003-05, the main appeal being that it was an expansive MMO that was free, which is the magic word for 9 year-olds who can‘t get access to their parent’s credit cards. (My best friend and I eventually got subscriptions after playing for one million hours and asking our parents once per hour.) Pretty sure our three All Time Most Discussed Topics would be Pokemon, Runescape, and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Don't remember how we all heard about it; must have been someone's older brother. My older brother's friends would always make fun of me because they played WoW, which to them was the grown up version of Runescape.
The funniest part was that my elementary school merged with a smaller school in grade 4, and everyone from the other school played Maple Story, while we played Runescape. It was a weird culture clash moment.
