VegettoEX Dot Com

Tag: podcast

  • Bonus Podcast: “Kintoki” Review

    Bonus Podcast: “Kintoki” Review

    AUTHOR’S NOTE: This 2010 post and accompanying podcast episode was sufficient for the time (barely), but really could use a total re-do… and it’ll get one at some point! We actually know how to record and edit things properly, now!

    In the meantime, you should check out the publicly-accessible page for Kintoki on the Kanzenshuu Wiki! At this time of writing (early 2021), the wiki itself isn’t live yet, but we made this particular page accessible so you can get an idea of the kind of insanely detailed nonsense you’re in for.

    I was just going to toss this up in the Daizenshuu EX podcast feed, but hey… I have some space over here, too, and I said I would only release podcast episodes as a part of this blog when I honestly had something interesting to say and do… and this seems relatively interesting…

    In September 2010, it was announced that Weekly Jump would have a special series of one-shots called “Top of the Super Legend” starting with issue 45 and going through issue 50. Current Jump artists would be contributing these new, short stories… but a certain “legend” of the recent past would also toss one into the mix: Akira Toriyama. A little later on, we learned that the story would be called “Kintoki“, and that was about all we got.

    Toriyama’s work, KINTOKI: 金目族のトキ (Kintoki: Toki of the Golden-Eyed Tribe), was the last one of the bunch and released within issue 50. All of us from the extended Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai communities are big fans of everything Toriyama has done over the years, but beyond comparing DragonBall to his prior works (especially its direct predecessors such as Dragon Boy and Tongpoo), we never have an opportunity to go in-depth about them about on our DB-centric sites.

    Well, nothing’s really stopping us.

    I decided to do a fun “bonus” podcast, and invited on Heath to talk about the new one-shot with me. Much like the “Manga Review of Awesomeness” recurring segment on my main show, what we did was recap the actual story of the manga, and then dove head-first into all sorts of things: name puns, correlations to other Toriyama works, our own thoughts on this new one, etc. It runs around 45 minutes, so it’s a pretty decent length show without going completely overboard (especially considering the one-shot itself is only about thirty pages!). We definitely had a fun time with it, and if you enjoy it and want to hear more like this in the future, let us know! We will probably do it anyway just to amuse ourselves, but it would be nice to know that someone out there actually wants to listen in, too.

    OP/ED: “Riding on a Time machine~サイケデリック☆５５” by Hironobu Kageyama (from the album Cold Rain — CDJapan / Amazon Japan)

  • Conversation 009: Shooting the Shit and E-mails

    It may take us six months, but we eventually hit you back with a show…!

    When we realized (upon gorging on pizza and beer) that the core group was actually all together at the same time and had a free evening, we decided we may as well just go ahead and record a show! Episode nine of the podcast is the embodiment of everything the show aims to be — a bunch of friends sitting around pontificating about video games. Sometimes we say stupid things and sometimes we say brilliant things, but the end result is a good time, and hopefully with a few guys you want to hear from.

    Andrew told us about playing everything from DJ Hero and Civilization IV. Jeff has been playing everything from Angry Birds to Boom Blox. Mike has been playing everything from Heavenly Sword to Final Fantasy 1. You all had e-mails with some top ten lists, and questions about everything ranging from English translation ambivalence to relationship advice.

    For your amazing convenience, here are some of the iPhone and PC games we spoke about during the show, as well as one article:

    Special thanks to all the folks who hung out with us the other night during the live recording of the episode! After you listen to the show to let us know what you think (and chime in on any of the opinions or questions), let us know how you best want to be notified about new posts and live recordings. Does the site warrant its own Twitter feed? A Facebook fan page? What do you think?

    Enjoy! Hopefully we’ll see you again sooner than six months’ time! Expect some blog posts from all of us in the meantime, of course!

  • Podcast Episode Coming – Your Thoughts Are Requested!

    I certainly do not claim to be a podcasting expert by any stretch of the imagination. Even after doing this for a bit over four years now, I still run into random tech problems and sound quality issues that I can not always perfectly troubleshoot, though I do the best I can.

    The spontaneously-combusting XLR cables are not my fault, though. I swear.

    I know it has been well over  a year since the last podcast episode (if you could call it that) for this blog, but I made it a point to say that shows here would be when I have something to say, and I would not do them just for the sake of doing them. That being said, I actually have an idea for a show to do. It is incredibly “meta” (and specifically about podcasting), but that is OK with me if it is OK with you! You have read before how I have upgraded equipment over the years, and what my typical workflow is for producing a show. That was a while ago, though, and a few things have changed.

    I really want to do an updated version of that, but more from the audio end of it rather than a text-and-images description. It fine and dandy to talk about it, but what does it all sound like…? Sure, you could compare the earliest episodes of Daizenshuu EX‘s podcast to some of the most current ones, but that would be a pain to do.

    What I am planning on doing is recording a few segments, under very controlled (read: “ideal”) situations in terms of surroundings and acoustics, to showcase exactly what my different microphones really sound like, and how that makes a difference for the listener. With myself more than anyone else you will be able to tell how upgrading and tweaking a few things can make a huge difference — it’s no secret that my regular male co-hosts Jeff and Julian have amazing, deep, booming, perfect radio voices, where-as I have to over-compensate.

    Not that I can’t form a coherent sentence, or anything like that. Oh, Hell… if you’re reading this blog, you know what I’m talking about!

    In a nutshell, I have a pretty good idea of how that part of the show will go. You will hear the different types of mics, positioning from them, what the most basic of software can do to help with it, blah blah blah. What about the other side, though? Is there anything about the behind-the-scenes production that you are interested in learning about? Not necessarily the tech behind things… but the research, methods, reasons, schedules, time-sinks… that kind of stuff.

    In general, is there anything about any of the shows I am involved with (Daizenshuu EX, lo-fidelity, vgconvos) that you are curious about? Why we do the things we do and how we do them? Let me know! I will probably pull Jeff on that later segment to answer with me, because he’s just such a swell guy.

  • Conversation 008: Sega Dreamcast 10 Year Anniversary

    Can you believe it’s been ten years? Neither can we.

    Marking the system’s tenth anniversary, we are all incredibly happy to bring you a new podcast episode looking back on the little system that could… well, it couldn’t in the end, but it sure did its best. We will probably be busy playing The Beatles: Rock Band tonight, but it makes sense to light a candle to remember the Sega Dreamcast. In this case, the “candle” is a new podcast episode. Work with me here, folks.

    Our buddy Bryce was aching to join us for this one, but although he couldn’t make it, prior guest Meri stepped up to fill in. The usual cast of Mike, Andrew, and Jeff fleshes out the cast to talk a little Dreamcast. What made it so special of a system? How was the launch compared to prior and more recent hardware launches? How did the games compare to others of the time? Which still hold up to this day, if any?

    With so many games released, it would be impossible to cover them all. None-the-less, we feel we did the system justice in our conversation, and round it all out with our Top 10 Dreamcast Games. You can read it now if you want, but it’s way more fun not to spoil it for yourself!

    A couple extra notes:

    – No, Soul Calibur in the arcade did not run on the Naomi hardware (as much as we may have indirectly said it did). It ran on the System 12 board, which was essentially a beefed-up PlayStation.

    – Never see the NiGHTS analog controller for the Saturn before? Here is the Japanese controller next to the American Dreamcast controller. Unless you’re blind, the relation should be quite clear.

    saturn_dc_controllers

    – Each of us still has a Dreamcast hooked up somewhere. Here’s my little buddy, right next to his daddy.

    saturn_and_dreamcast

    Thanks go out to everyone who joined us for the live recording, and even more thanks to all of you sticking it out with us and patiently waiting for another podcast episode! Hopefully the couple blog posts every now and then are keeping you busy! Enjoy!

  • Dreamcast Episode Coming Soon!

    Everyone else will be doing that same thing, but that’s OK… we don’t aim to be different; we aim to be us.

    We will be recording our next podcast episode (yeah, fancy that!) this coming Saturday evening. We might even broadcast it live on Stickam! Stay tuned to my personal Twitter for details, but in the meantime, we want your stories.

    Were you there for the biggest launch in entertainment history back on 9/9/99? What was your favorite game? Did you ever browse the web on your TV? Did you sink tons of hours into a console-based MMO? Did you scratch your GD-ROMs (as it was so easy to do) and never get to play a certain game ever again? Did you import the European version of a particular game so you could play it in English on the system it was actually developed for?

    Give us your Dreamcast stories. Keep them relatively short and easily digestible so we can share them on the show. Write them out and e-mail them over to us at feedback (-at-) vgconvos *D*O*T* (-com-), or just leave a comment here on the post. Send them in soon, since we are recording on Saturday. The plan is to have the episode our for the ten-year anniversary on 9/9/09, especially since that specific evening we will all be busy playing The Beatles: Rock Band.

  • Conversation 007: Online Services, Games, Demos, and More

    Hey, lookie here. It’s a podcast episode! That’s right, we finally got off our butts for the first time since February to record a show. We had a whole slew of ideas kicking around, but ultimately decided to discuss how online services for consoles have really changed the playing field. Whether it’s exclusive demos, downloadable content, further making magazines irrelevant… services like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network (and perhaps to a lesser extent WiiConnect24 and Nintendo’s Wi-Fi connection) have created an entirely new vocabulary gamers must be familiar with just to exist these days.

    There was just so much content cover, we didn’t even get around to discussing things like the reliability of services (PSN run slow for anyone else?), paying for access and the future of paid services (Gold, anyone?)… and on and on and on.

    We were happy to bring Meri on to shoot the shit with us this episode, and can’t wait to have her on in the future, again. In addition to talking about the games we’ve been playing and our main topic, we also gave our Top 10 Console Download Games.

    As always, big special thanks to everyone out there sticking with us while waiting for a new episode by contributing your responses on the blog posts and continuing to drop us a line. Whether it’s your own Top 10 Games or a question for us, we would love to hear from you.

  • Conversation 006: We’re Back With A Discussion Of The Games We Played In 2008

    Surprise, surprise!

    The three of us got together this weekend and recorded episode six of the show, had a blast doing it, and are extremely happy to bring it to you so quickly. We are easing our way back into a normal schedule, and while we don’t have a standard Top 10 list this episode… it ended up being a normal length, anyway!

    Since people seem to agree that talking about the games we have recently been playing is an integral and interesting part of the show, we definitely kept it in there. We have some pretty diverse gaming experience going on with Jeff focusing on the iPhone, Andrew dabbling with some sports games, and Mike playing a few games of yesteryear. For our topic portion, we decided to turn the previous discussion on its head and talk about the new games we played in 2008. We concluded the show picking our favorite game(s) of the year, and gear up for another batch of blog entries and podcast episodes coming your way.

    Big special thanks to everyone out there sticking with us while waiting for a new episode by contributing your responses on the blog posts and continuing to drop us a line.

  • Website, Podcast, & Future Plans

    I would feel guilty about writing a non-content post like this if I hadn’t just written a pretty decent one yesterday… ^_~. I definitely wanted to get some thoughts out there, because I believe it is extremely important to be transparent and open with how projects are going. If you are here and reading, you probably care and probably want to know… right?

    BLOG ENTRIES:
    This is one of my favorite parts of having this site around, and is something I had wanted to do for years (being that I wanted to just have a regular ol’ gaming blog). While this site was launched as a combination blog/podcast offering, I think it is very important to have both and I try to put just as much preparation and effort into one as I do the other. Blog entries are also things I can do from work, from home, while on the road… Sure, this is all obvious stuff, but I also think it’s worth actually saying (typing?) aloud to re-enforce that it’s available to me whenever, and I can, should, and will have fun doing it!

    PODCASTS (GENERAL):
    As the e-mails and blog comments have indicated, some of you are wondering when the next podcast is coming out. That’s a good question! The holiday season, traveling, etc. ended up killing off the December show, and now we are coming to the end of January. D’oh! Back when I was a much younger Mike running websites as a teenager, a two month period seemed like an absolute eternity. Now-a-days (especially in the midst of a house purchase), two months goes by like… well… picture me snapping my fingers here. There ya’ go. Just like that. I’m not sure that our plans for December’s/January’s episode even make sense any more (a reflection back on 1998’s games… ya’ know, looking back at ten years ago) simply because now we’re into 2009, and Retronauts ended up getting out an episode on it, themselves. We have plenty of topics we have tossed around to each other (Jeff is dying to do a show about game soundtracks), but is there anything in particular you would like to hear the group discuss?

    PODCASTS (FORMAT):
    Speaking of which, does the format of the show interest you? Don’t take that question as meaning that I don’t like it; I’m actually pretty indifferent about the format of the show. I personally love topical discussions, and so that (by default) ended up being part of the show. The standard “Hey, let’s talk about the games we’re all playing!” is pretty standard on every single gaming podcast, but I find myself enjoying that part of every show (both my own and other shows that I listen to). I think it’s safe to say that this will always be in there, but how do you feel about it? Since we aim(ed) to have a monthly show, we were shooting for a 90-120 minute length of the show). How about that? Do you want longer or shorter? Hopefully not longer…!

    WEBSITE:
    I guess you could also call this “layout”. Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while is move away from the we-clearly-adapted-the-default-WordPress-theme for a design of the site. I really like the custom theme I incorporated over into my personal blog. You can see that I have a thing for individual entries having their own surrounding “block”, and I’ve always wanted to get rid of a sidebar and drive all navigation up top. If I can swing some free time, you may see me experimenting with the look of the site. Do not be alarmed. Do not adjust your television sets.

    So that’s that, now you know, and knowledge is power.

  • Podcast Episode 003: Dumping Ground

    Wow. Whoda thunk that episode three would be out so soon when there were two months between one and two…? I know I certainly didn’t! Them’s the breaks here, though. When Jeff and I get together and there are microphones in front of us, something is going to come out. And end up in an RSS feed.

    What you’re about to hear is a little bit of an experimentation on a few different fronts. The beginning of the episode (the “meat” of the episode, if you will) was actually recorded after all of the other stuff, which in this case is the end of the episode. Follow all that?

    In a nutshell, Jeff is working to revive Lo-Fidelity (his music review/appreciation podcast), and we were farting around with my mixer and his MacBook Pro to test levels and all that kind of boring pre-recording stuffage. We ended up amusing ourselves in the process and were wondering what to do with all of that material. I suggested we just dump it over here on WTF EX, and then further decided that rather than just dump it, let’s record an “intro” to it and make it an actual episode. Furthermore, let’s not edit a damn thing other than dragging it into the production timeline and creating transitions between the “segments”.

    So here you go. If you ever wanted to hear us completely unedited, uncut, and uncensored (but thankfully not in a cropped-widescreen presentation), this is it. I hold myself absolutely non-responsible for anything I said, and instead place all of the blame of Jeff. What you’re about to listen to is the ramblings of one man who had already recorded an entire normal podcast, and another who’s itching to record his own.

    You have been warned. Please enjoy.

  • Podcast Episode 002: First E-mail Addresses

    So here we are about two months after the first episode of this little side-side-podcast. It’s certainly living up to the “what I want, when I want” mantra that I set forth! While we were waiting around for Julian to show up to record the previous podcast episode for Daizenshuu EX, I figured those of us on the local mixer should go ahead and do something short and fun for this blog. So we did!

    Jeff is back on this episode, and Meri also joins us, as we talk about our first-ever e-mail addresses and some early internet ignorance. I thought we had a couple pretty interesting stories, and it certainly drives home the idea that we were all stupid early teenagers at some point in our lives.

    Enjoy the show, and have a great Thanksgiving weekend~!