Retro Gaming Podcasts

Retronauts makes the strongest case for depth. In Shiny Entertainment the panel works through the studio's catalogue with real technical texture, including a custom engine running at "basically four times the pixels of what consoles were doing at the time." It also offers blunt judgment. One panelist suggests David Perry arrived at ideas early but lacked the hindsight to develop them in ways that hold up. Dark Castle & Hamumu Games is gentler. One developer recalls a friend's child, maybe four years old, mangling his nickname into "Hamumu." Another remembers seeing ports of his game on other platforms and feeling depressed at how poor they looked.

The Retro Hour (Retro Gaming Podcast) also goes to the source. In The Commodore Amiga at 40: The Original Developers' Story - The Retro Hour EP476, one original engineer recalls designing the audio chip as a junior chip designer. The story of Atari nearly buying the Amiga arrives with an honest "rumor has it." That episode runs 116 minutes, so save it for a long drive.

A different pleasure comes from shows that play a game before they talk about it. NEStalgia is working through every NES game released in North America in chronological order. In 424 - The Hunt for Red October the hosts note that the select button triggers countermeasures and decide the game "is a reverse kid icarus." The joke doubles as design analysis.

New Game Plus - A Retro Gaming Podcast gives three hosts seven days with one game, followed by a vote. In Episode 476: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind one host sits down to delete the game, tries once more, and finds it finally clicks. Another reports that the manual he consulted runs past 400 pages, probably slightly skewed by extra content in that later version.

Cartridge Command is the most practical of the group. 333: Legacy of the Wizard pt 1 goes character by character through who can use which items and who jumps worst.

Retrotopia: Another Video Game Podcast, hosted by a Brit, a Canadian and an American, has fun in Retrotopia Talks Rygar. The hosts agree the game has the bones of a metroidvania and jokingly rename the genre "rigars." The Game Reviews page sits next door.

Some hosts love the hardware as much as the games. On the Amigos Retro Gaming Network - Amigos: Everything Amiga / ARG Presents / Sprite Castle / Pixel Gaiden feed, Space Gun Review - Aliens inspired Amiga Action! 🔫👾 Amigos: Everything Amiga 544 compares the Amiga port with the arcade original. A host then resolves to build a light gun adapter for a CRT or two he has lying around. Its sibling ARG Presents leans toward the obscure. In FOR SWINGERS ONLY! It's 8-BIT Tarzan Games this week on ARG Presents! Grab your tiger tunic & YELL! the hosts explain how a lost Atari Tarzan survived. Two cartridges bought in 2022 allowed its ROM to be dumped.

SEGA SATURN, SHIRO! treats one console as a living scene of fan translations, prototypes and tournaments. In LIVE SHOW: MARCH 06 2026 - Lupin III Fan Translation, Prize Fighter on Saturn the hosts respond to criticism over an AI declaration attached to a patch they covered. They then concede that the newly released Prize Fighter prototype is "pretty bad." The Gaming News & Culture page covers news beyond a single console.

Not every show wants to teach. Remember The Game? Retro Gaming Podcast, hosted by comedian Adam Blank, is reminiscence with a guest, and it warns newcomers: "Our intros are kind of long." Remember The Game? #367 - Toobin' jokes about its own balance, predicting half an hour of intro and 15 minutes of game talk.

Call Me By Your Game, hosted by Connor McCabe, connects a game to a life. In Ep.256 - Starship Titanic with Arik Cohen the guest places his time with the game around his bar mitzvah.

Arcade Attack Retro Gaming Podcast stages The Gaming Jury - Chrono Trigger Vs Final Fantasy VI as a mock trial, with prosecution, defence and listener input.

Retro Smashed Video Game Podcast is the loudest of the lot: beers, insults and a trivia game before the retro talk. Its humour is crude, and some jokes go well past where many listeners will want to follow. For other kinds of leisure listening, the Leisure guide is a step away.