Retronauts Vol. III Episode 4 - Atari

Brace your face for Episode 4, kids. Because it's here.

Retronauts 4 cover

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As you can see from the fancy cover image, this week's show revolves around the essential, world-shaking, first major console ever made: The Atari 2600. And to make sure we did the topic justice, we dragged 1UP alumnus Scott Sharkey all the way from his modest hovel in the Nevada desert, where he's lived the past couple of decades waiting for his friend Anakin's son to finally reach adulthood. Sharkey's sarcastic familiarity with key Atari-era figures like Nolan Bushnell and Ralph Baer knows no equal. He was the only choice that made sense.

This episode doesn't focus on Atari's games so much as its overall business and history. It's really meant to be the companion piece to Vol. III Episode 1, so you may perhaps wish to give that one a listen before diving into this episode.

This week's host is-a me, Jeremy Parish. Bob and Ray also appear, of course, and do a fine job of providing a nice, sensible midpoint between my boringness and Sharkey's sniping. This week's soundtrack selections all consist of pieces from Jake "virt" Kaufman's Shantae soundtrack for Game Boy Color, a damn fine piece of chiptuning that happens to be relevant since we spend a while this episode discussing that game's Virtual Console release. And man, there is just no Atari 2600 music I would want to splice in for interludes. Oh, there's also an actual song spliced in along the way, but I'll let you get to that in the natural course of things.

Hopefully, you'll enjoy Sharkey's return as much as we did! We'll try to have him on again sometime. And please let us know if there are any guest hosts you'd like for us to go after -- we're always looking for a fourth seat.

Next time: Our first backer-requested episode topic.