### Ep. 194 - Kim Cardassian, with Rachel Weil and Lotte May
Artist and FEMICOM founder [Rachel Weil](https://twitter.com/partytimeHXLNT) alongside gamedev [Lotte May](https://twitter.com/LotteMakesStuff) join the panel to cover the Bally Astrocade, Jaffe’s favorite isekai, and Amethyst Princess of Gemworld. Original music by Kurt Feldman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-9HpR_eJvo
**Questions this week:**
1. What’s the deal with the Steam Deck? (03:44)
2. How does femininity best express itself in video games? (08:10)
3. How can we translate the appeal of mahou shoujo into video games? (13:31)
4. What’s the relation between video games and glitch art? (18:35)
5. Excluding Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Sega, who are the top 5 console manufacturers? (23:09)
6. From Brandon Sheffield: What are the best action games with female protagonists? (29:23)
7. Dirtbag Spencer asks: what video game allows for the most self-expression, while not specifically being about creativity? (34:29)
8. What are the greatest movie tie-in games made before 1995? (39:33)
9. Who would you use as the template for a “look book” for designers of female game characters? (44:11)
10. Who or what is the Lisa Frank of video games? (48:37)
- [Miracle Girls: Tomomi to Mikage no Miracle World Adventure](https://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/miracle-girls-tomomi-to-mikage-no-miracle-world-adventure).
- [Lost Word of JeNnY: Ushinawareta Message](https://www.mobygames.com/game/nes/lost-word-of-jenny-ushinawareta-message)
- [Devil Hunter Yohko: Dai 7 no Keisho](https://www.mobygames.com/game/mamono-hunter-yko-dai-7-no-keish)
First of all, I love Femicom since back in the day!
Second of all, I love Pop Cutie! since back in the day too! Did you know it was originally on Playstation? I love 90‘s and Y2K fashion, it lives on in games and manga forever.
Lastly, the whole reason I dropped Yakuza 0 was because "it’s not 80's enough". One of the main things I was looking forward to was the FASHION! And there was none.
Also yeah I consider Bandai a hardware mega giant because of not only wonderswan but the huge lineup of Tamagotchi and adjacents all through the 90's! Like the back of the US Digivice box I posted, so many awesome little electronic toys that were all so well made they go for over $150 each nowadays. Also, they produced the original tiny-ass Yugioh cards before Konami bought the IP!
@穴 I didn't hear the big name manufacturers that were excluded very well so when they came up with their “next best 5” I assumed that SNK was purposefully excluded. Then when they said “big four” I was like hold on, did they just drop Microsoft?
Some trivia on Little Witching Mischiefs: this game was made by Toys for Bob and is based on an Eidos-published tactics/arena fighter hybrid for PlayStation called The Unholy War—someone at Toys for Bob tried to pitch Bandai on a Super Robot Wars version for Japan but instead came back with an agreement to make a cross-franchise mahou shoujo game, and at first everyone at the company was all “wtf they put one over on us and stuck us with a dud license”, but as development progressed they realised that Bandai actually considered it a fairly prestigious project, at which point panic sunk in as they knew they were completely out of their depth and weren't going to be able to do justice to the IPs.
The run of eps lately has been so good. Really intrigued by Rachel’s art, looking forward to checking it out.
Also surprised with the lack of SNK, but the most obvious omission for the game console manufacturer to me was Apple! The iPhone literally changed gaming forever.
All the pink hue talk at the end reminded me of this Sega product I came across the other day online–some sort of virtual cat raising game in a cute sorta periwinkle handheld. I've never seen a Loopy (or this, for that matter) in person, but the shade feels Loopy-esque to me:
yeah, this is a bit more blue and purple than the loopy, as much as I‘d like it to look like this. if you desaturated this by about 50% that’s the loopy color.
Quickly chiming in to mention that the Steam Controller is the best couch browsing experience for anyone who has a computer hooked up to their TV. Perfect for VN/ADV/Point-and-Clicks too. Valve were cowards to discontinue the thing.
I find it insane that some people are hyping up a $650 machine to play fortnite or whatever. Glad it's more powerful than the Switch since you can buy two Switches with that money.
I thought the non-conventional aspects of the Steam Controller were fine, it was the meat-and-potatoes stuff that they didn't do well: the face buttons, the bumpers/triggers, the stick, etc.
I kinda really love, and kinda dislike my Steam Controller. I agree that it is excellent for the couch browsing experience. The touch pad thing works great, and I also enable the gyro controls highly dampened and on extremely low sensitivity to aid in pointer aiming. Flick around the big touch pad with a thumb, then touch the other pad and wobble the whole controller a little bit to fine-tune where the cursor is. It works great!
The paddles are a good idea with poor execution on this controller, they just never felt good to use. The buttons feel unsatisfying to press. Overall I still like it, and I think it is a shame they discontinued it.
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It is a crime that nobody suggested Celeste as an action game protagonist.
another great episode! i'm loving all the different guests because their influences are so varied, every episode yields at least 5 cool things to check out, apart from the recommendations at the end
@rejj nobody was really engaging with the action game protagonist idea at all! I was starting to get embarrassed for bringing it up in the first place.