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Day of the Diver

Day of the Diver

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DOCTOR NEW: Our hosts spend a little bit of time discussing the newest episode of Doctor Who, “The Church on Ruby Road.”

FISHING & STUFF: Our hosts talk about the charm, the complexities, and frustrations of the hit video game, Dave the Diver.

THE CALL OF PUBLIC DOMAIN: With the new year brings a new slate of texts into the public domain. While most people are talking about Disney’s latest loss, Andrew focuses in on a piece of cosmic horror that has officially entered public domain this year, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.”

TOPICS:

(00:00) Intro – Doctor Who
(03:11) Dave the Diver
(28:59) Outro – New items in the public domain
(32:48) Outtakes

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “Quite Easily Done” (08 June 2018): Where our hosts discuss a documentary by the video game documentarians, NoClip, about the history of the developer, Bethesda.
  • “Academic Quality Entertainment” (04 August 2023): Where Andrew talks about his time playing Dredge.
  • “Pleasure Quotes” (22 December 2023): Where our hosts talk about the bigeneration episode that introduced the new Doctor as played by Ncuti Gatwa.

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FEATURED MUSIC:

Extra Obnoxious Protocol

Extra Obnoxious Protocol

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COVID-INDUCED ANIME: There was no episode last week because D. Bethel got sick with the new strain of COVID. Though his symptoms were mild, the biggest side effect was probably the most troubling: he watched anime. Specifically, he watched the 12 episode series, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (available on Hulu Plus) and realized that mechs are cool.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: A very strange news story happened in the comics world this month when Fables creator and writer Bill Willingham announced that, due to the frustrating relationship that had developed with DC Comics over how they were handling his creator-owned property, that he put Fables into the public domain. Our hosts discuss what exactly that means, how it works, and if it’s even possible.

RELEVANT LINKS:

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Don’t Pull Out Your Deck

Don’t Pull Out Your Deck

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ANDY’S STEAM DECK ADVENTURES: Andrew shares what it was like to actually take his handheld PC-device on the road (and what games he’s been playing).

BOMBING THE BOX OFFICE: This summer has been marked with a series of movies that had really big budgets and very low returns, and it’s a trend that seems to only be continuing. Our hosts talk through possible causes and possible futures of this distressing trajectory.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “Space Man From Pluto” (30 June 2023): Where our hosts talk about studios’ use of AI as well as the financial struggles of streaming services.

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FEATURED MUSIC:

Wheelhouse Collector

Wheelhouse Collector

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DEVIANT ART: There’s a lot of talk around AI-generated art lately, and with questions about copyright, ownership, sourcing, credit, and applicability, our hosts do their best to parse this very new and nebulous topic.

TOPICS:

  • (00:00) Intro – It’s September!
  • (02:25) The problem (and possibility?) of A.I. Art
  • (35:56) Outro – Short She-Hulk: Attorney At Law impressions
  • (37:30) Outtakes

RELEVANT LINKS:

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FEATURED MUSIC:

Ghost Games

Ghost Games

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BETTER DREAD THAN DEAD: D. Bethel shares some initial thoughts on the newest 2D Metroid game, Metroid 5 aka Metroid Dread.

EMULATE YOU WANT IT, THAT’S THE WAY YOU NEED IT: Kotaku got in a bit of heat when they reported a story about how people were able to get Metroid Dread up and running on emulators in a smooth 60 frames per second at 4K resolution. The problem is that, in the original story, readers felt that Kotaku was, in fact, recommending people pirate Dread instead of buying it because of the emulator’s stronger performance. This lead to another round of discussion about emulation, piracy, and game preservation. Andrew and D. Bethel do their best to weigh in on these issues.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “The Eye of Agamemnon” (18 November 2016): Where D. Bethel and Andrew discuss the storied history of old episodes of Doctor Who erased from existence by the BBC.
  • “River City Rampage” (17 August 2018): Where Andrew and D. Bethel discuss the value and importance (and danger) of video game emulation.
  • “I Am the State” (26 February 2021): Where D. Bethel and Andrew discuss whether the Metroid series is being neglected by Nintendo.

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

Zombie Brooms

Zombie Brooms

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ROUGH TEXTURES: Capcom gets sued for allegedly using textures from a reference book––Judy A. Juracek’s Surfaces––for many of its games in the early 2000s and the evidence is pretty compelling. Without dispensing professional legal advice, Andrew guides D. Bethel through the nuances and complexities of this interesting case.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “Don’t Stop Recording” (03 July 2015): Where D. Bethel and Andrew talk about how the 1986 classic,The Transformers: The Movie, may have started as a toy commercial but ended up as a defining emotional moment for young fans at the time.
  • “Listeners in the Woodwork” (18 October 2019): Where Andrew and D. Bethel discuss the lawsuit surrounding the origins of the theme song from X-Men: The Animated Series.
  • “Dating the Void” (23 April 2021): Where Andrew discussed the copyright confusion surrounding Sherlock Holmes.

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

Too Many Johnnies

Too Many Johnnies

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BETTER THAN IT SHOULD BE: After a lot of build up and expectation, Andrew and D. Bethel finally get together to record an episode about former YouTube/current Netflix show, Cobra Kai.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • “Shortcast 54 – Cameo Train” (11 May 2018): Included for no reason except for the fact that the phrase “cameo train” was used in this episode.
  • “Dad Talk” (18 September 2020): Where Andrew first talked about watching Cobra Kai and watching the first The Karate Kid film.
  • “Chekhov’s Honk” (22 January 2021): Where Andrew and D. Bethel discuss the original The Karate Kid trilogy of films and how they influence Cobra Kai, briefly.

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

  • “Nerd Law” by D. Bethel

Listeners in the Woodwork

Listeners in the Woodwork

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TO ME, MY LITIGATORS: Eyebrows raised recently when a Florida man sued Marvel, Fox, Saban Entertainment, and many other production companies saying that the generation-defining theme song of the ’90s X-Men animated show actually plagiarized a strikingly similar theme of a popular Hungarian tv show from the 1980s. Nerd Law man, Andrew, and X-Men fanatic, D. Bethel, put their heads together to see if this case has any legs to stand on. (A big thanks to friend-of-the-show, AndrĂ© La Roche for his consultation on this topic.)

DISNEY PEMDAS: Last week, Disney made waves as it began an irresponsibly long Twitter thread announcing every title that would be available on its upcoming Disney+ service. D. Bethel and Andrew sort through the announcement, talking about how much this will shift the paradigm of entertainment consumption.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

  • “Nerd Law” by D. Bethel
Episode 156 – River City Rampage

Episode 156 – River City Rampage

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It’s the return of NERD LAW!

A MARVELOUS MONSTER: After a long gestation and some delays, Disney has officially acquired 20th Century Fox assets, comprising of Fox’s film and tv properties. This means everything from the Alien franchise to Bob’s Burgers and even The Simpsons are now owned by Disney. Of course, for comic book fans and fans of comic book movies, the biggest part of this deal means that the X-Men and the Fantastic Four film rights are now under Disney/Marvel control. But it’s a much bigger––and more complicated––deal than just the superhero franchises and make some people a little nervous.

WHAT NINTENDON’T: Emulation software has been on the internet for at least twenty years at this point, allowing people to download and play often near-perfect versions of games from the NES, SNES, and many other classic consoles. While playing emulated games have always been legally murky, Nintendo’s big legal smackdown of a few emulator and ROM sites in particular have really shaken the whole community in more ways than one.

RELATED EPISODES:

RELATED LINKS:

INFO:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
-“District Four” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
*Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode 150 – Comivention

Episode 150 – Comivention

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WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew returns to a previous WiG by booting up a since heavily patched River City Ransom Underground (starts at 2:03) while D. was impressed with the pragmatism and instructional value of Brandon Dayton‘s Sketchbook Summer artbook (12:32).

NERD LAW: When legal stuff happens in the nerd world, Andrew is on the case (though not dispensing any legal advice). This time around, he talks about Epic Games suing players who use cheats in Fortnite and Comic Con International winning its copyright battle against Salt Lake Comic Con over the term “Comic Con” (19:40)

RELATED EPISODES:

LINKS:

  • Bethel, D. “Trials By Fire #001: Fantasy“: A 2011 article by D. Bethel where he talks about Orcs Must Die!, a game he compares to Fortnite.

WORKS CITED:

INFO:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
-“Nerd Law” by D. Bethel
-“District Four” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
*Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/