Curbside and Virtual Services

The game's afoot at Library Comic Con where we talk about a variety of games for different interests. Curated by Library Comic Con committee with recommendations from Games With James.

Check out these podcasts!

• The Doofcast

  To sum up Doofcast in one word: pop-culture.  Week to week, the two hosts, Scott and Matt, rotate between a book club, a director’s retrospective, and a movie review, with a wild card subject they just felt like talking about thrown in there from time to time.  This format is refreshing because since it’s a different medium every week it never has a chance to become stale.  The hosts have great chemistry and vacillate satisfyingly between fascinatingly analytical and total goof balls.  They rarely have guests but that’s just fine; they can carry a great show between the two of them.  They are witty, acerbic, and refreshingly intelligent. 

• The King Cast

  There are a great many Stephen King podcasts out there, but this one has a unique premise.  The two hosts invite a guest who had chosen a King book, and then they discuss their experiences with both the book, the movie, and how the two formats interact.  It’s almost shocking how many King film adaptations there have been, so this show will be running for a good long while.  Guests include mostly people from the film industry such as writers, directors, editors, and actors.  Before diving into the book and film discussion, they ask about the guests history with the horror writer, and most of the time the stories are quite interesting and relatable.  Though revered, King projects can have their misses, and the hosts and guests are perfect for this format because they will not pull punches if a book or film fails expectations.  The result is an always entertaining, always unpredictable hour of audio. 

• Retronauts

  If you’re a millennial or a Gen-Xer, this show will definitely speak to your childhood.  Retronauts is a retro video game podcast focused on games and consoles from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000sThe lead host, Jeremy Parish, has a gentle tone, and sets a breezy, relaxed mood for each episode.  Bob Mackey, of Talking Simpsons fame, is the other host, and they have a rotating stable of entertaining, knowledgeable guests each week.  The show is a deep dive, with a ton of research behind it.  No stone goes unturned regarding the history of the week’s subject.  This is equally matched by their keen analysis of the technical aspects of the industry, and their infectious emotional connections to the subject.

• Ultra64

  A retro video game podcast, whose first iteration focused on the Nintendo 64.  Their goal was to have a show about every game on the console and by the end have their definitive respective rankings.  That project was achieved this year, so they have moved on to a different console, the WiiU.  Hosts Steve Guntli and Woody Ciskowski grew up with the console but had not played every game.  The result of the experiment is listening to their experience of playing a game for the first time, playing one they remember and it bringing back fond memories, or playing a game they had in childhood that seems vastly different from their memories.  Sometimes they have guests, but often it is just the duo, and either way is always entertaining.  They like to give a brief history of the development of each game and then dive into their reviews.  The last portion of the show is a mail bag that usually yields quite interesting or insightful questions from listeners.  The show is funny, nostalgic, and is a good listen no matter what mood you are in.