Summoning more listener feedback, this time about MANLY games
As we close in on our next Retronauts recording marathon weekend, I'd like to collect your thoughts on my third and final episode topic. (In case you missed it, I'm also soliciting feedback on Final Fantasy V and Link's Awakening... although boy howdy, we have no shortage of novel-length missives about those two topics already.) This third subject may be a bit more abstruse than its companion episodes, as has become our Retronauts focus mission — that is, maintaining a mix of both crowd-pleasing and abstract topics. I'm calling this final episode "BRO-totypes."
If that name seems a little too dated for your tastes, you can make it a bit more current and go instead with "Intoxicating Masculinity."
In short: The theme of this episode is to explore the sudden appearance of over-muscled beefcake dudes and tall, lanky gunmen in video games circa 1986-1990. Why did they suddenly become so popular with the near-simultaneous arrival of things like Rastan Saga, Golden Axe, and Castlevania? Why did manly action shift from hitting things with short-range objects (Rygar) to shooting them with guns (Vice: Project Doom) over the course of the latter ’80s?
In short, we'll be talking about this:
Not this:
Any platform is relevant, and any game from 1985-1990 that eschews cartoonish cuteness in favor of a more serious sensibility (even if it's over-the-top and cartoonish in a different way) is worth discussing. Share your favorite Manly Games of the late ’80s, or feel free to speculate on the nature of that sudden trend in gaming or its long-term influences! Write in to jparish [at] retronauts.com sometime in the next few days... and be sure to flex in a mirror at least once while composing your email.
