Legion Gaming Podcast
Welcome to Legion Gaming! A retro gaming retrospective podcast hosted by lifelong best friends (really, over 30 years), Donny (DonVanDam) and Deucy. We love to talk about video games and share our passion with other gamers. Each episode we’ll revisit some of our favorite video games over the last 35+ years and talk about development, history, memories, and how well these games hold up. Go back to the future and get ready for Deep Dives, Top 10 Lists, Retrospective comparisons, and more! New episodes every Thursday! Follow us and tell let us know what you want to hear! legiongamingpod@gmail.com Twitter: LegionGamingPod Instagram: LegionGamingPodcast
Episodes
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
This week, we're diving into the original Metroid and one of the best remakes ever made in Metroid: Zero Mission for the GameBoy Advance. It's the first in our mini-series that will culminate to our episode celebrating Super Metroid's 30th Anniversary in April! We thought it would be fun to revisit the beginning of gaming's first bounty hunter and her iconic remake.
In 1987, Nintendo R&D1 was inspired by Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror classic 'Alien' and released Metroid for the NES. To say it's influential is a bit of an understatement considering it spawned an entire genre that would be known as "metroidvanias" (and one of Donny's favorites). It was one of the earliest NES games that broke the mold. You weren't going from left to right the entire time, you were going back and forth collecting items and abilities to progress. The sense of dread and isolation coupled with graphics that were heavily influenced by the works of H.R. Giger gave way to an experience that was never seen before, or thought possible on the NES. We also can't forget one of the biggest mindblowing twists in gaming history when we discovered Samus Aran was a woman!
17 years later, Nintendo wanted to reinvigorate the original and introduce the original Metroid to the new fans who played Metroid: Prime on the GameCube and the previously released GBA classic Metroid: Fusion. By this point, the original NES Metroid already felt dated and brutally difficult. Nintendo R&D1's remake is one of the best games you can play on the GBA and perfectly captures what made the original so great while modernizing it. This was one of our favorite GBA games to playthrough and we talk about the differences and similarities between the two games. It's incredible Zero Mission recently celebrated it's 20th anniversary and still feels amazing to play, even more incredible is the original Metroid is now 37 years old itself. Join us as we dive into Planet Zebes once again and celebrate gaming's first female bounty hunter!
Next week: Metroid II: Return of Samus (GameBoy) and Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
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Thursday Mar 07, 2024
Thursday Mar 07, 2024
In our newest episode, Deucy and I rank 19 games from the Mega Man and Mega Man X series. We thought it'd be fun to individually rank each game and combine our lists into one definitive, no argument, ranking. We'll be covering Mega Man 1-11 and Mega Man X-X8, spinoffs or remakes like the excellent Mega Man X remake on PSP, Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, will have to wait for their time to shine on the pod, but we wanted to be sure we covered the mainline games in both series. Both of us share our memories and love for the series and it's always nice when there's only one real stinky stinker in the series to talk about (take a wild guess). What will take the #1 spot as the best Mega Man game ever? Join us as we tune the nostalgia fiddle and play a symphony of classic retro Mega Man greatness!
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Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Thursday Feb 29, 2024
Before Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was the "third" Resident Evil, there was Resident Evil - Code: Veronica. This week, Deucy and I are celebrating RE: CV's 24th Anniversary and looking back at the ORIGINAL third game of the Resident Evil series. A series of events beginning with the failure to port Resident Evil 2 to the Sega Saturn ultimately led to the creation of the next generation of survival horror exclusively on the Dreamcast. We're talking through the development of the game, everything new to RE (including the first in the series to be feature fully polygonal backgrounds), the story was was much larger in scope, and of course, our fond memories of playing Code: Veronica. We also take you through Code: Veronica X and what led Capcom to release it on the PS2 in the U.S. while Japan managed to get a Dreamcast version. We hope you'll love listening to this episode as much as we loved revisiting one of our favorite games in the Resident Evil series!
Next week: The Definitive Rank - Mega Man and Mega Man X Series!
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Thursday Feb 22, 2024
Thursday Feb 22, 2024
In June 1999, the world witnessed skateboarding history as Tony Hawk landed the first ever 900 at the X Games. The feat would be the catalyst that would propel skateboarding into the cultural zeitgeist and three months later, Neversoft released Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the PlayStation. The tight and intuitive controls with the open levels gave every single person the ultimate skate park. Deucy and I drop in to revisit one of the influential and best games on the PS1 and go into the history and significance of the X Games, the development of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and all of our memories of playing it. We also talk about the N64 and Dreamcast ports and how those differ from the original. This game, and series, has a lot of sentimentality for me and it's always a great time to play THPS. We had a ton of fun talking about everything Tony Hawk and hope you'll all enjoy it as much as we did!
Next week we're covering Resident Evil - Code: Veronica as it celebrates it's 24th anniversary!
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Thursday Feb 15, 2024
Thursday Feb 15, 2024
In this X-citing episode, Deucy and I cover the first seven years of X-Men games! Created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the iconic X-Men comics originally released in 1963. As video games recovered from the crash in the early 80's, it was inevitable that the world would see games based on their favorite mutants and we sure did... We start at the beginning with the disastrous The Uncanny X-Men (published by LJN, surprise) for the NES and talk about our memories of dreaming to play this game as it became the ultimate nightmare. We'll also cover Wolverine for the NES, the incredible 1992 Arcade game, X-Men on the Genesis and Game Gear, Children of the Atom, Mutant Apocalypse for the Super Nintendo and more! This episode will cover games released between 1989 and 1996, we'll release a Part 2 later so keep an ear out for that. We had a lot of fun going through this games and are excited to share it with you.
Music: 0:00 Here Comes the X-Men (X-Men Arcade)10:19 Wolverine's Theme (X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse)1:31:00 Space Port (Theme of Juggernaut; X-Men Children of the Atom)
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Thursday Feb 01, 2024
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
In this episode, we invite our friends Mike and Randy from the Hollywood Video Guys podcast to talk about the best and worst games based on movies. We cover the early history of movie tie-in games beginning with Porky's, Halloween, and the infamous Atari 2600 failure E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. We'll take you through each console generation and discuss our memories of favorites and the ultimate disappointments including The Terminator (Genesis), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (NES), Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (PS1), The Matrix: Path of Neo (Xbox/PS2), Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (PS1/Saturn/Arcade), The Mummy Demastered(PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) and a lot more.
Deucy and I also joined the Hollywood Video Guys podcast to talk through Movies Based on Video Games, so don't forget to check that episode out!
Share your memories of movie tie-in games with us!
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Thursday Jan 25, 2024
Thursday Jan 25, 2024
Have you ever really enjoyed a game and then you reach a boss fight that just somehow is the WORST part of the game? Even rage inducing? We have too. This week, Deucy and I are sharing some of our not quite fondest memories of some of the most difficult and, in some cases, flat out cheap and quarter munching bosses we've faced throughout our gaming lives, right down to the Game Over. Not every game can be amazing but that doesn't stop us from having some fun and coming back for more pain.
Next week: Games Based on Movies
Tell us your favorite or most hated game based movies at
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Twitter: LegionGamingPod
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Thursday Jan 18, 2024
Thursday Jan 18, 2024
We're concluding our Donkey Kong miniseries today with Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64! Before DK64 celebrated it's 25th(!!!) anniversary later this year, we wanted to go back and see if it's still as great as we remember it. We'll talk about how this was originally supposed to be a 2.5D game before Rare decided to transform DK64 into a 3D game using Banjo-Kazooie's engine. 1999 was also a pretty huge year for releases in general and we dive into some of those before we breakdown what magazines thought of DK64 on release. As huge and impressive as Donkey Kong 64 was, this episode would not be complete if we didn't talk about the over 3,000 collectibles the game has to achieve 101%. One of us did it 25 years ago and we share our memories of how we did it and how long that took! We close the episode out with our final thoughts on the legacy of DK64 and the Donkey Kong Country trilogy. This was another fun episode so kick back in your banana hoard and press start to continue
Have a game you want us to cover? Let us know!
LegionGamingPod@gmail.com
Twitter: LegionGamingPod
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Thursday Jan 11, 2024
Thursday Jan 11, 2024
This week, we're covering the final release in the DKC trilogy on the SNES with Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! Released in November 1996, just before the final year of the SNES' lifecycle, DKC3 would be among one of the best swan songs to the console you could hope for. A unique open world inspired by the European countryside, nearly 50 levels, over 100 secrets, bigger and badder enemies, a trade quest with a family of bears - DKC3 had everything you could ask for in a new adventure - why didn't people like this one as much as 2? Deucy and I break down the development, reviews, and all of our memories for this underappreciated gem. DKC3 was in a rough spot with the N64 being brand new and against PSX and all of the incredible games that released in 1996. Join us as we give our final thoughts into the trilogy and what our favorite of the three were. We'll conclude our DK miniseries next week with Donkey Kong 64, an incredible (but more bloated than Donkey Kong after a banana binge) and ambitious game for the Nintendo 64!
Next episode: Donkey Kong 64 (N64)
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Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
We're continuing our Donkey Kong miniseries this week with Donkey Kong Country 2 for the Super Nintendo. The second in the iconic Donkey Kong Country trilogy was released in November 1995 and quickly became one of the best games on the SNES. In this episode, Deucy and I talk about the development and origins of Dixie Kong, including the insane amount of possible names that were pitched for her and how badly people missed Donkey Kong. We had a lot of memories about this one and share how our most recent playthroughs compared to what we thought of it in 1995. The comparisons become a lot more interesting since both of us recently played through the first DKC! This episode was really fun to record since we both have so much history with DKC2 and made us more excited to get to DKC3 and Donkey Kong 64. Follow us and let us know what you think and what games you'd like to see us cover!
Next week: Donkey Kong Country 3 (SNES)
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