The original classic gaming podcast continues its endless quest to explore the history of video games, one game at a time. Join hosts Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey each week as they team up with a host of expert guests to chronicle the creations that have paved the way for today's hits. From forgotten black-and-white arcade machines to modern-day remakes, Retronauts spans more than four decades of vintage gaming greatness!
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That that's, Right. That makes sense. Yeah. According to all sources, he he was drawing basically his entire life. He was doing a lot of drawing as a kid. I saw a note that he he won several contests. I went to school. It was Japanese. They said which I'm assuming is like a is like a life drawing. So maybe, like, some models or animals or He in his in his early interviews, he's there was, like, a of some kind of, like, there was an old dude in the neighborhood who ran a like, I'm not sure if it was a studio or a shop or something like that, but it was like a drawing classroom. Okay. And he would have kids come in and and and draw. He would teach them drawing techniques. And Mhmm. Apparently, Toriyama, there was he he at some point, the guy had a contest to draw Dalmatians from the 101 Dalmatians. Right. And Toriyama was kind of obsessed with that cartoon as a kid, you know, age 5, 6. And he entered the contest. And I don't know that he won it, but the the the the guy running the the teacher, if you wanna call him that, selected his work to display, and that was like a huge, huge moment for him that he felt like his art could reach it. But it's it's interesting. It's another crossover of Disney and and Japanese pop culture. You know, famously Osamu Tezuka of of Astro Boy and, you know, Kimba the White Lion and and, you know, so many other, you know, formative manga was deeply, deeply, deeply influenced by Disney. So as much as we like to say anime, anime, it's like a Japan thing, it's actually a crossing of of many cultural streams, and and Toriyama's another great example of that. Yeah. And right alongside 100 and 1 Dalmatians, of course, Toriyama cites, Tensika's Adam, you know, Adam boy as Astro Boy. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Hey. I I I apologize too much there. But
11 and just fell in love with that. Well, actually, 9 was the first, my first friend Quest I completely completed and really fell in love with that one. Wasn't it where play 10? And then 11 came out and was like, oh, this is really good. And it gave me an interest. So I actually went back and played the original Dragon Quest and just recently beat Dragon Quest too. It's one of my goals to actually go through the entire Dragon Quest series and see more. But the every time I play it, whether it's the, the Franco Heroes, Dragon Quest Builders, it is so charming that I can't help but really love the series. And I think once you sort of take hold of drying quest, you, like, you wish for its success, like, bigger success in the west. Absolutely. Actually, now that you mentioned it, yes, my husband and I, we have been watching your Dragon Quest videos, and they are really excellent. And we just watched the one where you went to Dragon Quest too, and If you got the dragon quest slash dragon warrior 2 on the NES, you are prepared for everything. That is very useful for what you The only other one that I'm worried about is when I eventually get to 7, because I will say I'm gonna try my best to play the original versions of all of them, which means I'm p s 1 version of 7 and, oh, dear. Yeah. Not even I've touched the p s 1 version of 7. I have done the, 3ds version, and I liked it quite a bit, but I understand why people are, you know, it's not really their favorite one, but, I enjoyed parts of it quite a bit. I think you'll like it, but I am curious to see how you like it, like, from a a PlayStation perspective especially since, the game that we're talking about now is so different from Dragon Quest 7, which was, it kind of estranged a lot of people from the series, I think, especially in the west. Dragon Quest 7 was a very kind of muted slash retro looking game. A retro playing game even, like, in the age of three d, polygonal RPG that were hugely cinematic, like, Final Fantasy 7. Like, it did look a little bit rundown. Is that why you kinda passed on dragon quest 7 the first time, Derek? Do you remember? I mean, I was into our
I I feel like when they made the movie, they didn't have to work too hard to make the characters likable and the events memorable because, you know, underneath the the layers of political intrigue and submarine technology, you do have, you know, a pretty solid, well developed cast of characters. I I think the movie is a much more interesting experience because, one, it's much briefer, 2, it's got Sean Cawdlery, and 3, they they just excised a lot of the really minor characters that don't do much to really move the story forward. They're just kind of there as flavor. If you enjoy what you hear, head over to patreon.com/ retronauts and enjoy 100 and hundreds of hours of exclusive content with more available every week. Your support makes this show possible.
The latest rankings. But at one point, you were the number 3 world speed runner of King's Quest 1? A long time ago. Mhmm. I so I do I sorta consider myself an average ish speed runner. My interest in speed running is less about the competition and more about pulling the games apart and seeing how they work. I can't even remember what I am on the leaderboards for King's Quest 1 at this point because in, like, the last few years, a lot of things have happened and a lot of neat optimizations have gone on. But, you you know, typically, if there's a game that I run, you can find me sorta near the middle of the leaderboards, for the most part. I'm happy with that, though. And needless to say, Matt knows way more than me about Kings West and, as does Dan. I, basically did an 18 hour cram session on these games. And, before I go on any further, though, I wanna talk about our experience with the games. Mine is very simple because it should be noted that I definitely have a LucasArts bias that that's clear from me putting together all the LucasArts episodes for retronauts. I have dabbled a bit in the world of Sierra, but by the time I got a PC or my family got a PC in 1996, everybody was making fun of Sierra games, the older ones. I mean, that was the era of Phantasmagoria and Gabriel Knight. It was a different era for them, but everything I learned about the old Sierra games was, hey. Don't play them. And here are jokes about all the bad puzzles. So I was just a cautious observer of them for the longest time. And I've I I love watching Let's Plays of them. I love watching rifts of the games. I love watching, speed runs of these games, but I've never been brave enough to play them myself. And that's where I'm approaching this. I love the history of Sierra. I don't know if I love their game design sensibility. But, Dan, you sponsored the episode. Where did you meet King's Quest in your life, and, what is its relationship with you? Alright. I think that I first saw it at a child's, like, hangout party or something that that that was a little kid and the kid put on his dad's computer and, you know, there was a couple of
Game close to my heart. And, Andrew, the CEO, when he told me, he, has, got the license, spoken to Gearbox, and we're gonna work with them on the Duke Nukem. I just turned around instantly and said, we're we have to remaster 12, Mhmm. Because they they were criminally, like, underrated in the sense that, like, no one really managed to play them. Right? There was Yeah. Not an easy way to play these games, for a long time. And, funnily enough, I think it was about a year or 2 before I actually watched, Clint's, video, LGR, and he did a a video on the Rigel engine. And, he was showing it, and I thought it was amazing. And, so it all kinda like fell into place from there, really. Like, you know, had this huge love for I had this huge love for Duke 1 and 2. And, you know, I saw LGR's video and and then Andrew came along and said, oh, we've got the license. And then, I said at that point, I just said, we need to remaster this. And then I think, like, that week, I literally, reached out to Nico and said, hey Yeah. You wanna collaborate? And, and then that's how it all really started, I guess. Yeah. So so the the intent was to do sort of the June even cartridge even before the idea was there to do 1 and 2, it was it would have been like, the PlayStation games maybe or Yeah. Yeah. So we the the the intent from everybody was to do the cartridges as they were. Yeah. But I certainly wanted to go the extra mile, with 12 because just on the races that, I I I personally love them, and I think they're great, like, platformer games. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Again, just seeing I remember watching the LGR's video and and seeing the Duke 2.
