We've finally gone and built a real web page for the show. So if you've somehow made your way to this site, it might be time to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to that of the new site.

You'll find the new site here.

Comments welcome, of course.

Here's two more mini-casts from Penny Arcade Expo.

This time it's...

LUNCHTIME conversation
and...
A DEMO of Midnight Club Los Angeles

Enjoy. And we'll be back with a full show plus more bonus audio tomorrow.

We're doing a little impromptu recording from Penny Arcade Expo.

Here's the first installment.

That's right, this Thursday evening you'll be able to either just listen to or participate in the recording of the Game Club segment for episode 88. We'll be talking about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, PSN, XBLA, PSP) at 10 PM EST on Thursday, June 26, 2008. And you'll be helping us test out a method we may use for future Game Clubs.

You can listen online at talkshoe.com -- http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/21140 is the show page. Register for a username while you're there just so we know who you are when you join the chat room. You can also listen via regular phone or Skype (or other VOIP software). The phone number is 724-444-7444. Our call ID is 21140.

Participating is easy. If you've registered for a talkshoe account and set up your PIN, all you have to do is call in either via phone, Skype or VOIP client--same number as above. When you enter the call ID you'll be prompted to enter your PIN (or if your PIN is the phone number you're calling from you'll just be connected right away). Then the "request to talk" button will be available. Hit it and you'll be put in the queue of callers. (No you don't HAVE to talk, you can just listen/chat.)

We've got a topic about this up on the forum. That's in addition to our regular Game Club topic on Castlevania.

Due to travel schedules and such over the holiday weekend Episode 74 will be delayed a bit. Instead of being released today, expect #74 to drop hopefully late Monday evening. Further updates as necessary. Happy Easter everyone!

Just a quick FYI, in case you were expecting the episode to hit...well, now.

Due to everyone's holiday schedules and changing travel plans Episode 62 is gonna be late. It will be out the evening of the 1st.

You've still got another 24 hours or so to email an MP3 of your high/low for '07 to playeronepodcast@gmail.com, Skype it to playeronepodcast *or* call 713-893-8069 and leave it on the voicemail.

Happy New Year!

Next week is our 52nd episode. And to celebrate this momentous occasion we're looking to get "Happy Anniversary" / "Congratulations" / "Thanks for the podcasts you beautiful bunch of douchebags"-style messages from our listeners (and other podcasters!) to play on the show. Yes, we're just that shameless. There are multiple ways you can do this:


If you do any of these by the end of the day Friday, October 19, you're likely to hear yourself on Episode 52. Just be sure to say who you are and where you're calling from and all that noise. Hope to hear from YOU before Friday. Thank you!

Hello radio listeners!

We will record a mega E3-themed show this weekend (likely on Saturday). And we're looking for your opinions about the show. The press conferences, the games, the coverage websites are doing, any comment or question on E3 you'd care to leave us. If we get any (and that's a big "if") we'll probably play them on the show. So call 713-893-8069 on your telephone thingamajigs, or Skype us at username playeronepodcast and leave us a comment.

Please? 'Cuz otherwise you'll hear us...bitching about Sony, bitching about Nintendo, bitching about Microsoft and their Halo 3 Xbox 360, and bitching about bitching about all of these things. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that your phone calls would make our show so much nicer. Unless, that is, you're calling to bitch.

Call before Saturday morning or we can't use ya. :'(

Sometimes, technology is against you. Episode 32 is delayed -- and will be posted on Tuesday, June 5, instead of the usual Monday.

CJ spent the last few days in Chicago and we tried, twice, to record Episode 32 while he was on the road. Unfortunately, the iBook he'd purchased back in 2002 wasn't powerful enough to handle Skype and recording via Audacity without crashing multiple times or resetting its settings to record via the laptop's internal microphone instead of the headset.

The lesson here is that CJ needs to buy a new laptop before we try to do a show while he's on the road again.

UPDATE: Well, we recorded it a third time. And of course ran head-on into two more technical problems that have prevented this one from going smoothly. So the episode will be out Tuesday night, hopefully before midnight. Here's a tease -- we discuss racing games.

The thought occurred to me that a few of you stopping by might never've been here before. So first, let me encourage you to hit this link and subscribe to our 'cast via iTunes. Next, allow me to tell you what the heck you've signed up for:

It was mid-October and Greg Sewart and I (Chris Johnston) were chatting over Xbox Live while playing some rounds of UNO or somesuch. We were discussing some big gaming news that'd happened that week or something when Greg said, "we should be recording this. We're interesting, right?" Though neither of us knew a damn thing about podcasting at the time outside of listening to a bunch of them, after some research, some brainstorming, and some money spent on equipment, the podcast and the page you've arrived at was born. Yes we're still working out the kinks some 22 weeks later, but the important part is it's amazing we've continued doing a show a week so far without stopping (even for holidays).

Three of the four regular hosts of the podcast are ex-game magazine editors, which probably gives us at least some sort of unique perspective on the headlines that come out of the industry these days. Greg was EGM's previews editor for a number of years and still freelances for various game magazines and web sites. I worked at EGM for around 10 years (though not consecutively) and was the magazine's news editor for...well, a long time. And Phil worked at EGM back in the day and later worked on Expert Gamer before he became GameNow's reviews editor. Along for the ride as well is Dan Dormer, freelancer for 1UP and other sites and also the keeper of the Video Game Media Watch site.

As of this writing we've done 22 shows and 1 "commentary" track. You may want to sample some of our past wares to get an idea of what we do here. You could go back and download/listen to all of them, but in case 24+ hours of podcast is too much for you to think about, here are five in particular that are nicely representative:

Lost in translation (Episode 16, 2/12/07) - Our interview with Ted Woolsey, translator for many of Square's 16-bit RPGs including Final Fantasy VI.

Home invasion (Episode 20, 3/12/07) - We did a little post GDC talking about Sony's PS3 Home service the week after it was announced at GDC '07 and chatted about Little Big Planet.

Shame in our game (Episode 08, 12/18/06) - The main topic in this episode was to reveal our greatest gaming shames. The first step to healing was admitting we have a problem...

Tackling difficulty (Episode 12, 1/15/07) - We talked about the fun of playing hard games as a game reviewer where you don't have the luxury of "taking your time."

Festivus for the rest of us (Episode 09, 12/25/06) - Our Festivus episode is a big wrap-up of the big headlines from 2006.

May I also encourage you to join our discussion forums. And if you have a comment you want to share with us or want to pose a question to the group, you can give our voicemail a call at 713-893-8069 or drop us an e-mail at playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Take care, and enjoy your stay...hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for dropping by!

- CJ

If you didn't get a chance to listen to it yet, we interviewed Ted Woolsey (translator for many of Square's 16-bit hits including Final Fantasy VI) in Episode 16. Get  it--Episode 16, 16-bit Final Fantasy? Yes? No? We totally planned it that way.

Now you can read the full transcript of the interview here. In it Ted reveals such things as the genesis of the US-flavored Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, the original intention to release Final Fantasy V on the SNES in North America, and he speculates on why the spell "Holy" might've been changed to "Pearl." Plus he talks about the difficulties of fitting a coherent English translation into the size constraints of a cartridge and the time constraints of the manufacturing process. Here's a taste:








More at the jump...

The rumors are true -- indeed we are opening a forum this weekend. In fact, it's open right now at www.playeronepodcast.com/forum. Go there, claim your username, and post away. It's got some very interesting community features to it and I'm curious to see how people are going to use it. If you have any trouble there's a forum for problems (of which there were many earlier today).

We are already looking into putting up a forum (though I am still not convinced it is necessary yet). So whoever's just hitting the MP3 file repeatedly thinking they can make it go faster, you can STOP. Please. It's not going to make it happen any faster. Besides, we can see that it's just one or two people hitting it repeatedly. Thanks for the support though!

For the rest of you, you might have seen the news from Nintendo Power's latest issue that Super Paper Mario is back on for the Wii and is coming out in April. That means Phil is teetering very close to being left behind in the Dead Pool pack. We'll be talking about that some more on next Monday's episode.

You can now Digg the Player One Podcast (that is, if you use Digg and dig our podcast). Just go here. We thank you in advance for your vote.

We're also up on the front page of the iTunes Store's Podcast page this week...well, three tabs into the "Video Games" section in the center there. Welcome to any of you who're visiting this page for the first time because you saw us there.

Unlike some podcasts, we will be posting a new episode early next week. In fact, we've already recorded it. Previous special guests Phil Theobald and Dan Dormer join Greg and myself and we go over the big news of '06, list out our favorite games of the year, and then come up with a gift we'd like to give one of the industry luminaries this year. Something they could use. It might be a long episode this week...jeez we talked forever.

Anyway, thanks again for listening and Happy Holidays all --

- CJ

At this time last year, if you were looking to buy an Xbox 360 as a holiday gift, you'd be looking at paying at least double the system's $400 price for a Premium Pack. The things were in hot demand. Yet this year, with the PS3 launch...the successor to the #1 game brand for the last 10 years, systems are...well, very easy to find. A quick look at the Craigslist listings in the Houston area and you see systems going for very little if ANY mark-up. One post reads that if no one calls to buy his 20GB at $550 (at cost, more or less) it's going back to the store. There are several 60GB systems going for as little as $650 -- again, at cost.

So, what the hell happened? For all intents and purposes the PS3 should still be in hot demand. It's only four days before Christmas, you'd figure that people would certainly pay $25-50 above cost for the machine... no?

Why I bring all this up is that a friend of mine bought a 60GB PS3 about three weeks ago at a Best Buy here in Houston, thinking he'd resell it on eBay and at least get enough profit out of it to buy a Wii. Fair enough. So tonight I asked him how it went, since I hadn't heard yet. He laughed and told me he still had the system. He put it up on eBay, the winning bid was $715 (barely above the $650 cost to him and not enough to get a Wii from the profit). The winner decided not to pay. Afterwards my friend listed it on Craigslist for $750 -- got NO e-mails. Instead he's just going to return the system to Best Buy and get his money back. I did consider buying it off of him, but then I thought...I really don't need a PS3 right now. As I've said before, Resistance is the only game I'm even halfway interested in (because it's Insomniac), and that alone is just not that compelling a reason to get one. Plus I'm still not done with Zelda, Gears of War, Rainbow Six Vegas or Phantasy Star Universe for the two new-gen consoles I already own.

I wonder what this means for PS3. Clearly, if demand for it has died this quickly it can't be a good sign--can it? Granted I still haven't seen any PS3s in stores, but I haven't been looking all that hard either. Another slightly bad sign--in the latest EGM they've put together something very similar to the Xbox vs. GameCube feature Greg and I have been talking about on the podcast. Except it's PS3 vs. Wii. And the unanimous winner is the Wii.

How are the PS3s selling near you?

- CJ

You may be wondering, "why isn't there a new episode up this morning?" Well, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, travel schedules and regular-job duties, there won't be a new episode up today. Instead, we will post Episode 05 on Wednesday, followed by Episode 06 next Monday (and then it's back to the regular schedule). Thanks for your patience and understanding. And to tease it, on Wednesday's show, one of the things we'll be talking about is the Xbox 360's first year -- good, bad, ugly. Join us, won't you?

Obviously, next week's show is going to talk heavily about the hardware launches that are happening in North America at the end of this week and this weekend (PS3 and Wii). While we're going to have some of our own launch stories to tell, we'd also like to hear yours.

So, how can you get us your story? You can drop a comment here on this blog entry, write us an e-mail or send us an audio file with your tale of woe/triumph at playeronepodcast@gmail.com or you can leave us Skype voicemail by Skyping playeronepodcast.

Tell us about your line experiences, your pre-order pick-ups, the weird folk you were in line with, etc. Oh, and if you wanna include what you think of your launch purchase, do that too. Did you buy that PS3 just to eBay it you sorry sonuva... *shakes fist*

You won't win anything if we include your story on the 'cast, but you will get to live in infamy. Or something.

Oh and don't be shy, leave us a comment on anything else you'd like, too. While we're relatively new to this whole podcasting thing, we want to craft a show that you guys are going to enjoy listening to. So tell us what you think. Thanks!