One Life Left's Podcast

This week’s show sees two BIG Marioke announcements. The first is that we’re doing a Marioke gig in New York on 24th February (we would put 24/02, but it would just confuse everyone who is going there). It promises to be a great event and not just because Simon won’t be there. The second Marioke announcement involved our Super-Special Guests, Henry and Chris. They’re in a band that play live backing tracks to people singing songs. But hang on, don’t we have a side-project that changes the lyrics of karaoke songs to be about videogames? Is there some way that we combine these two aspects and make a Marioke with a live backing band? And perhaps we could make it a fundraising event for Resonance FM (the best radio station ever)? The answer to all these questions is YES. Other than our amazing announcements we further developed our relationship with Lewis Schaffer, had a cameo appearance from Producer Chris and Ann confirmed that smoking is cool. She’ll probably have to speak to HR over the week about this. Ch

It’s just the lads tonight as Ann had a migraine. And being a kind, trusting team at One Life Left we take her at her word and don’t try to work out where else she could be - at least for the first half-hour anyway. We also failed to have a Super-Special Guest in the studio. But luckily that meant we could talk to David Heslop about videogame tv via Skype. David told us how difficult it is to get videogames on television (usually through a SCART lead or HDMI cable) and how frustrating that is considering the many opportunities that games offer children’s tv. Normally Ann being away causes issues with the news, but luckily Ann came to the rescue. There was also a bit of Parkinson chat, Simon told us what it’s like to be a big deal on Twitter and Ste nearly broke his NDA. Ouch. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/dtHeslop Tracklist: 1. Hide Your Tigers - Decaying Tigers http://chipmusic.org/Hide+Your+Tigers/music/decaying-tigers-lsdj 2. Enders Crusade - Xenocide http://chipmusic.org/Enders+Crus

One thing we always forget to check before each show is if Simon’s workplace proximity acquaintance John believes our Super-Special Guest for this week’s show is excellently named. Luckily this week we remembered and we can confirm that week’s SSG - Jake Tucker - has a John-Approved name. Jake is currently writing for Rock Paper Shotgun, but has also been involved with Videobrains, which Vice described as TED talks for videogames. He’s also created a game called 20something that is based on his personal experiences and is currently working on a new game that will presumably be based on when he was on the show. Either that or Ste persuaded him to make a cricket themed sequel called 20twentysomething. We also found out the difference between Itch and Steam, Ann made a slight mistake in her news that Ste and Simon were far too gentlemanly to point out, had a debate about Outrun (that was easily solved) and had features from Rob Beer and Sega Badawi. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/_jaketucker

It’s difficult when you have a decision to make and both options are fantastic. On one hand we all had an invite back to Lewis Schaffer’s where we would have discussed how great both of our shows are and possibly someone would have understood Simon’s t-shirt reference. On the other hand we had a show to make and produce. And if we didn’t make the show would Lewis have invited us to his place? Luckily there was an additional factor to bear in mind when making our decision as videogame legend Mev Dinc was on the show. We covered loads of topics from the 8 bit computers up to the present day, but it was good to find out the easiest way to port Enduro Racer from the Spectrum to the Amstrad, how/why First Samurai was possibly the most pirated game on the Amiga and what it was like to be one of the main people to make Ubisoft the success it is today. We also found out that Ste has come up with some merch ideas (which might mean we finally have a chance of monetising our brand), Ann went on a walk (but forgot to p

It’s the first show of a new year (4AL* if you’re keeping note) and all the team is back. Ste returned from his overseas holiday to the Caribbean and Ann came back from Spain. Jamaica? Yes, otherwise she’d be hearing from our HR director. To ease us into the new year, we got a guest in who is always willing to talk to us on numerous topics. Well, as long as that topic is the game that his company has recently released. It’s David McCarthy from Cygames! He managed to make all our questions relate to Cygames’ latest release Shadowverse, except for when we asked if Shadowverse was made by magicians. Shadowverse is Hearthstone meets Magic The Gathering and is played by 15 million Japanese people everyday, and 15 million people can’t be wrong (Insert EU Referendum reference here)! We also found out if Ste has become bloodthirsty now his Mum says he can play violent games (Sub please check this), what DAU stands for, what Simon has recently ordered to put at the bottom of the canal and what is frustrating Ann. Se

It’s a Christmas special with lots of surprises so we don’t really want to spoil them in this intro (although the links bit does give it away a little). We guess we can tell you that Luke Williams from Bossa Studios was in to talk a little bit more about Worlds Adrift and what it’s like making a game where people are generally nice to each other. But any more information will affect your enjoyment of a show that is different to our usual ones but just as great. Cheerio and Merry Christmas! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/eternz https://www.worldsadrift.com/ https://twitter.com/plentyspace https://twitter.com/teenytinylisa https://twitter.com/CharlesCecil https://twitter.com/notken https://twitter.com/mattsheret Track list: 1. Ding Dong Merrily on High - Robby Duguay https://robbyduguay.bandcamp.com/ 2. Go Tell It To The Mana - Robby Duguay https://robbyduguay.bandcamp.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s Super-Special Guest is John Vega who works at Curve Digital as a business developer. Luckily as Simon was away, there was no conflict of interest in the interview section. Unluckily as Simon was away, there were lots of questions we could ask John about working with Simon. We found out what it is that a business developer does, what the success rate of the game pitches Curve receives is like and how we can improve our chances of getting our game published (probably by not asking personal questions about Simon). Little Acre is one of the first games that John biz devved and it should be out now! John told us a little bit about what made him interested in the game and also that Lord Sir Charles Cecil had a small role in proceedings. That must mean it’s going to be great, or that a goat has been put into the game somewhere. Ann proved her news hound credentials by uncovering the new name for Super Mario Run and also a new price point for the app. This news may be related to Ann’s new glasses which

It’s a Christmas miracle: Simon’s back! He did forget to bring Sega Badawi or a Super-Special Guest with him but made it up by managing to get Skype working in our studio. This meant that we managed to get Gary Plowman on the show as our Super-Special Skype Guest. Gary spoke about his ZX Spectrum Code Club book, which is a good stocking filler for all family members (depending on the size of the stocking). Incredibly Gary has managed to get a Basic version of Flappy Birds working on the Spectrum which we’re already excited about coding. Gary allowed two thirds of Team OLL to reminisce about typing in programmes from magazines and books - along with the typos and misprints that caused the whole programme to fail. Anyway, with Gary being our inaugural Skype guest it now opens the whole world to being Super-Special Guests. So if you live in a non-Brexit country and still want to be involved in One Life Left then let us know (offer also open to UK residents who just don’t fancy coming to London). We spent last

Once again it’s another episode without Simon Byron and Sega Badawi. Actually, we’ve never seen Simon and Sega in the same room. Could they be the same person? We’ll try to find out by next week. But anyway. This week’s episode started with a remixed version of the OLL theme due to a dodgy cd, luckily it wasn’t a portent of future issues to come as the show had absolutely no problems (assuming we remembered to edit them out). At least we started to make inroads into a special relationship with the other One Life Left (not that one). And Ste set a new world speed run for Braid. Our Super-Special Guest this week was Stella Wisdom from the British Library. She was in to talk about her Off The Map competition which combines actual historical documents with actual interactive games. We found out about how it got started, what the theme for the next set of games is and about the Wordplay festival, which recently took place at the Library. And we didn’t make any sssh jokes. We’ve become so professional recently (a

We have two rules for our guests. No swearing. No banging. But, as you’ll find out on this week’s show, those rules do not apply to Team OLL. Obviously it’s because Simon wasn’t on the show so the rest of Team OLL felt we could break the rules. Worryingly this may mean that Simon is the responsible one of Team OLL. For instance, Simon is responsible for booking our Super-Special Guests and he came up trumps this week with Ben Nicholson from Cape Guy Games. Or should that be Ben Nicholson, who is Cape Guy? We tried our best to work this out, but as usual we got incredibly confused. We’re blaming the incredibly quick studio changeover from Lewis Schaffer’s Nunhead Radio - which we now have to a fine art and shall be teaching our techniques to F1 pit crews across the world. Anyway, Ben was on the show to talk about his new game Ski Three, which is a match three game crossed with an endless runner. We found out about who the game was aimed at and why that could have caused problems if it wasn’t good enough (luc

To paraphrase Adam and The Ants: Don’t bang. Don’t swear. Obey these two rules and you’ll do fine as a Super-Special Guest. And as Darren Wall from Read-Only Memory was on for his fourth appearance there’s no way that he would break those rules. Right? Darren was promoting Read-Only Memory’s latest book which is about the Bitmap Brothers universe. After a brief history lesson for Ann we started to find out more details about them and tried to determine if the Bitmaps produced the first ever cool games. And how did Woolworths play into their creation? Unfortunately Darren failed to announce the next book that he’s working on, but we give him some great ideas. Mostly involving us. Away from our SSG we named a bear (using a joke that The Caretaker made about a year and a half ago in a podcast description), Ste had a gym induction, Ann got a great gasp from one of her GOOD NEWS stories and Simon got distracted by the smell of the book. And Sega Badawi failed to get the GOOD NEWS ONLY memo. Cheerio! Team OLL x

The first OLL after bonfire night saw Team OLL one member down and slightly deflated after we got bored by fireworks. If only we knew what would happen in America on Tuesday!!!! (SATIRE) Anyway, with Simon away we forgot to do one of Simon’s Important Tasks. Luckily we didn’t forget to book a Super-Special Guest as Tom Cole came on the show to promote Adventure X - The Narrative Gaming Convention. Tom told us who had been announced as Super-Special Guests at Adventure X and it was an impressive list containing the European-Cup winning John Robertson (we might have got the wrong J Robertson). The band that will be playing at the event sounded a little familiar, but Tom managed to talk us around and there may be logistical issues regarding the fireside chat. And it’s free so what’s stopping you from going? Ste gave some incredibly useful advice for videogame journalists as well as being unbelievably happy about catching a Porygon. Ann is getting her photograph taken next week, Sega Badawi dropped some Local N

According to our bizarre way of numbering episodes we believe (excluding Ann Life Lefts, No Continues, GDC Specials, OLL Knights and LITERALLY UNBROADCASTABLE SHOWS) that this is our three hundredth episode. A number so special that we typed it out in words. And how did we celebrate it? The same way we celebrate every episode: By getting Ann to make Kieron Gillen cry uncontrollably through fear. And what better way to celebrate our special anniversary by getting Flavourworks’ Jack Attridge in as a Super-Special Guest? It was a rhetorical question, but there is no better way. We tried our best to get Jack to announce the game that he’s been working on, but he claimed that he couldn’t do it due to ‘contracts’ and ‘legal agreements’. So instead we found out why the entire Attridge family hates Heavy Rain, why he was filming Ste in the studio and why he keeps making his lovers cry. Jack is also trying to make games less external and more internal, which we think means he’s doing a reimagining of Microcosm from t

Sometimes we think we go a bit too obscure with the titles for our GMA-nominated podcasts. This one was inspired by our Super-Special Guest Gary Burchell, who is in the middle of creating the pirate game (but not the pirated game) Abandon Ship. See? It’s quite a clever title really. Gary told us all about Abandon Ship, which has been described as FTL meets Master and Commander and has been used by games journalists as an opportunity to do lots of poor puns. We asked Gary about what it was like to go indie, why he hasn’t put his name in the title and why water ships are better than space ships. It’s also the week after the GMA awards so we EXCLUSIVELY reveal if we won and who managed to avoid putting their name on The List. We also remembered an incident that we’d really like to blank from our memories. We also started a new news feature which every other GMA nominated podcast will be copying in the future and saw Rob Beer and Sega Badawi returning with their regular contributions. Ann made a special announc

After an Ann-sized absence (or Ann-sence) last week we welcomed the return of our HR director and person who reads the full news story (and not just the url). But what did she get up to in Iceland? How deep did the conspiracy go? And how were eggs involved? This week's Super-Special Guest did not bring any eggs, but he is a Cooke! It was Robbie Cooke from Rebellion who was on the show to promote what some are calling 'the best PS VR launch game' - Battlezone. It's an official VR version of the old Atari wireframe game and sounds really good. But we were more interested in how Rebellion bought the IP rights from Atari and how we could use it to improve our own standing in the videogame world. We were also excited as the day after recording we were going to find out if we had won our second GMA. While you wait with baited breath to find out the result, keep listening to hear what Simon's son uses the most sophisticated of voice recognition technology to do, find out the latest local news from Sega Badawi and

After a wonderful time at the Slush Play conference in Iceland, Ste successfully made it back to the studio. Ann didn't and neither did Ste's top. Unfortunately Simon was also going through sports jet lag due to the baseball and also because of him 'be'ing Alex Hunter. Yes, it's hard to believe but a game has finally knocked Star Wars Battlefront off. Perhaps it'll be joining Simon's Wii at the bottom of the canal before too long. Our Super-Special Guest is James Long, who created a game that is Top Secret. It is based on Edward Snowden and the events leading up to him releasing his leaks. Perhaps we've said too much just by having James on our show, but we think we can tell you that it is a real time email game where you react to actual emails that were sent out at the time. And we provide clear evidence that you can monetise your brand on One Life Left through Simon, sorry 'Alex', buying the game on air. And, if we haven't made it clear enough, the game's name is Top Secret. We also had some Confessions o

We regret to inform you that we haven’t found a use for the coin sound effect in this week’s episode. This is due to a surprisingly high level of competence from ourselves, which will never last. Iceland will be the main beneficiaries of our incompetence this week as Ann and Ste are going over to the Slush Play conference to do a Sigur Ros and Pollaponk based Marioke and to eat their body weight in Pipp chocolates. Ann is also going to be playing detective over there, hopefully she’s got a good jumper sorted out for it. Martho Ghariani from Oasis Games was this week’s Super-Special Guest. He’d just flown in from New York and boy were his arms tired! Oasis Games is a Beijing based publisher who is bringing five Playstation VR games from China over to the west over the next few months. We heard about the developing console market in China and tried to learn even more about how VR will change the videogame industry. Perhaps with all our knowledge we’ll become the first-ever VR podcast? (Actually this is A Good

We suppose we should start with the major news this week. Resonance FM now has beer mats. It is this promotional machine that has got us another GMA nomination in the category that keeps changing its name and has currently decided that it is Best Radio/Podcast Team. As we call ourselves Team OLL we're quietly confident that a team full of lads will win it again. Actually, that wasn't the big news was it? The big news is that Ann is back. The annual winner of the GMA for best newsreader (well she would be if they held it) is off her sickbed and back into the studio. Although she might still be a little ill as halfway through the show she identified as a millenial. Our Super-Special Guest this week was Lupine, who is often a presence at our Marioke events. He didn't have any games or items to promote so we just spoke about Marioke and tried to get him to confess to any nefarious activities. So a standard show really. This week's returning features were Rob Beer's Confessions of a Part-Time Gamer and Sega Bad

As is standard with the second episode after a break One Life Left is an Ann down. But if you're the HR director what is the correct process for sick leave? How long do you talk about it on air? And how do you cover radio's best videogame news reader? The answer to that last question is how Ann feels: poorly. Our Super-Special Guest were actually Guests as we welcomed James Parker and Tony Gowland into the studio. After we anointed them as The Last Shadow Puppets of Videogames we spoke to them about Binaries, which is coming out on consoles after being a big hit on the PC. We asked them how Binaries has changed on its transition to the consoles, the problems with setting a difficulty level and also how Lemmings 2: The Tribes helped shape the new version. After a break Sega Badawi returned with the latest local news and we have (sit down for this) a new feature. Rob provided us with his confessions of a part time gamer, hopefully our lack of replying to his email last week won't stop him from sending more fe

Summer break is over, but One Life Left is back, Back, BACK! And it's been a long hot summer, being a three-button Monday. So what did we do over the holiday? Simon walked past Hugh Dennis, Ann had too much coffee and Ste did something that may get mentioned during the show. We also guested on other podcasts in an attempt to become videogames answer to Sean Paul/Ludacris. Except in most cases we were too hot for release, we blame the three undone buttons. And in a break from our break-returning tradition we had a Super-Special Guest this week. In fact we had a real Scanters' Choice between comedy's Robin Ince and Failbetter Games' Hannah Flynn. The criteria we had for this week's SSG was how long they would be prepared to talk about Fallen London coming out on Android and about the forthcoming release of Zubmariner - the expansion to the amazing Sunless Sea. Oh, and their name had to fit the title for the episode that we had already chosen. We should get Robin on later in the series though. We also spoke to