8-4 Play: 02/21/2014 -- "I CHOOSE YOU, AAJST(????"

Almost 4 hours! This will get me through work. :)

Really nice to hear Hiroko back, 60's-style perverted as she may be.

Jeremy Blaustein? いいセンスだ！

Greatly enjoyed the talk with Jeremy. Fantastic as always.

Blaustein worked on Biker Mice From Mars!?

Praise be!

I wonder when this was recorded in relation to the current progress of Twitch Plays Pokemon.

The clip on the end mentions things that happened on Thursday, so probably Wednesday or earlier.

My 2nd favorite podcast!

I wasn't impressed with Titanfall and actually cancelled my preorder after 6+ hours of the beta.

Also, Respawn confirmed that Microsoft paid EA to make all Titanfall games exclusive to xbone or PC so it wont be on pS4 this generation .

This podcast definitely upped my respect for Sega, while also cementing how far Konami has fallen since the PSX/PS2 era for me. Whoever thought it was okay to re-cast Silent Hill 2 for the HD collection clearly had no respect or understanding of the original artistic endeavor.

A shame the Sega guest couldn't give any solid answers on specific games still up for question for localization though. That's the main thing I worry about with Sega lately, so few of the story centric games make it over anymore (and those are the ones that matter most to me).

The itunes version is only 2:34:38

Great episode.

Whoa I live super close to Jeremy Blaustein, Just outside of Himeji...I checked facebook and we have like 15 mutual friends :o

@draxyle: Konami's fall last gen was actually pretty incredible. They went from one of the best developers to pretty much a joke. They have released so little of quality compared to their past output in the last 10 or so years. Whenever employees of Squar Enix are depressed by how far their employer has fallen I'm sure they just think of Konami and remember that it could be a lot worse.

@amyggen: Truth. Konami in the 90s was god-like and great in the PS2 era. What the hell happened over there?

Ethan Einhorn is so wrong DOTA & TF2 are loss leaders.

@nasar7: Well, if that annual pre-E3 Konami show is anything to go by, their mangagment is borderline insane. So that's something.

YEAHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Successful health clubs, I guess.

Ethan, please keep localizing Miku. <3

I worked at MetalGearSolid.org and we had a lengthy interview with Jeremy Blaustein. We had to cut an hour+ out of it because there were some tidbits that he wasn't entirely sure he wanted public.

Have to say, really great episode with lots of interesting industry insight. Jeremy Blaustein has worked on so many fantastic games!

Only got around to downloading this now. Waiting to tomorrow at work to listen to it because got 1 hour train hour to work and 3 hours before I have to teach my first class at 4PM so have time to chill out

@error1355: Will they ever be revealed?

The decline of widespread console adaptation in favor of mobile games and handhelds.

What's the song that plays at a 1:34, when they transition to the second part of the podcast ? I know I've heard it somewhere...

3 1/2 hours? Awww yeah!

And all this SEGA talk makes me happy.

Nice

@ruthloose: It's not only that though, it's the level of incompetence even when they try to do something for the consoles. The Silent Hill HD collection is a good example: I can't remember any company fucking up something so easy as a HD collection of two games in such an amazing way as Konami did with that one. That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how bad Konami has become. You can't just point at the firm diverting resources to other parts of the company to explain this massive fall in quality.

Great Podcast. Jeremy Blaustein was so interesting. I found the fact that Scott T. Hards of HLJ translated Snatcher so very cool!

@amyggen: Do you know who or what team at Konami was responsible for the HD Collection? It feels like a project given to a young team without clear leadership and/or lack of original assets according to post-release interviews. I could see a younger team attempt to save face/not understand what made the original games so great especially if the original code/assets were not properly archived (a real problem with older Japanese SEGA/Nintendo/Capcom games).

That aside, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection may go down as one of the best HD packs of all time.

@ruthloose: I have absolutely no idea who did the HD Version, only that they didn't really consult any of the original devs. Doesn't really matter though, it was still released by Konami and pretty much awful in every way compared to the originals. How they could let it be released in that state I will never understand. I do not agree with Jim Sterling on everything, but his rants about that HD edition and Konami in general have been spot on.

Heard good things about the MGS HD Collection though.

Give Jeremy the 8-4 Bump, all!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iqioi/blackmore-a-steampunk-adventure-game

@hassun: I doubt it. The guy who has the whole unedited interview has it on a CD somewhere and he told me he has lost it the last time I tried to get a copy of it from him.

Also a few people think that he wasn't invited to the Metal Gear 20th Anniversary Party due to the interview coming out like a month or two before that party. However that's just rumors so I wouldn't take that anywhere near fact.

I've been pretty far out of the Metal Gear fan community scene since MGS4 though. (The owner of the MetalGearSolid.org domain sold the site to someone else and screwed everyone else who worked on the site... But that's a lot of internal staff drama there.)

Some of the most interesting times on that website. We somehow got someone into E3 to interview Ryan Payton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3-uvFHq7nY)

However Payton started to yell at us for our community members being a bit negative towards things in Portable Ops and such. Oh well.

Right, I was gonna ask what games does Konami even make anymore, either handheld or console? All I can think of is PES, Metal Gear, and some half-assed Castlevanias. They're not exactly killing it in the mobile space either.

@nasar7: agreed, and their marketing was so bad for that last MGS collection. It was actually a good collection too, but they didn't do a good job with telling people about it. Heck, they could have really gotten the word out how rad Peace Walker is and how everyone should be playing it, now that it is not locked to the PSP. Instead they just dropped the ball.