Announcement - December 2023

Announcement - December 2023

Author: Franchise Festival December 2, 2023 Duration: 1:55
Hello listeners, this is your Franchise Festival host Chris. We just wanted to provide a few quick announcements: (1) There is no new episode on the public feed this month, as we’re taking a short break between seasons to recuperate and enjoy the holidays with our family and friends. (2) Patrons will get our annual Game of the Year podcast on or around December 15th. If you’d like to hear it, please subscribe to at patreon.com/franchisefestival for as little as $3/month. You’ll also get access to the full back catalog of bonus shows, including some very strange Resident Evil spinoff episodes and a bunch of indie game coverage from Season 3. (3) We’ll be shutting down our website in 2024. It’s pretty expensive to maintain, and the data indicates that most of you listen either through podcast apps or our Patreon page. Consequently, the Patreon will become our new home on the web. Public feed episodes are still posted there for free listening, so you don’t need to be a member to enjoy it. (4) Finally, our fourth season starts on January 1, 2024. In case you missed it, our plan is to cover Capcom’s Mega Man series from start to finish over the course of eleven shows. We’ll also be releasing patron-exclusive bonus shows on remakes, spinoffs, adaptations, and spiritual successors. We appreciate your interest in the show and look forward to joining you all again next year. We’d also like to express a very special thank you to our patrons: Cheatachu, Celeste, Ed, Loren, Quinley Thorne, Cedric the Owl, Jarathen, and Jasper - you bring joy to our hearts and inspire us to make the best content we can. Thanks for listening, everybody! Goodbye.

Franchise Festival digs into the stories behind the video game series that shaped a medium. Each season is a deep, chronological exploration of a single franchise, tracing its creative and technical evolution from often-humble 1980s origins through to its latest installments. You’ll hear about the design breakthroughs, the business decisions that changed course, and the cultural moments that turned pixels into lasting legends. This isn’t just a review show; it’s about understanding how these interconnected worlds were built, year by year and sometimes crisis by crisis. The podcast favors depth over breadth, spending multiple episodes to fully unpack the development history of noteworthy series like Castlevania, SimCity, or Mega Man. The narrative focuses on the people and processes behind the games-the how and why, not just the what. It’s for anyone who’s ever wondered about the connective tissue between their favorite sequels or the forgotten prototypes that paved the way. Tune in for a thoughtfully researched and structured audio documentary experience, one franchise at a time.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 85

Franchise Festival
Podcast Episodes
Season 4 Episode 4 - Mega Man X [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:30:04
Chris and Hamilton are joined by special guest Nadia Oxford, author of the Maverick Hunter's Field Guide, to talk about Mega Man X (1993). Along the way, they learn about Capcom's difficulty growing Mega Man past its 8-b…
Season 4 Episode 3 - Mega Man 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:14:27
Chris, Hamilton, and Spencer talk about the first Mega Man game developed after the departure of creator Akira Kitamura: Mega Man 3! Along the way, your hosts discuss yet another troubled development period, a bewilderin…
Season 4 Episode 2 - Mega Man 2 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:35:53
Chris, Hamilton, Spencer and special guest Eddie V (@thatretrocode) discuss the development, gameplay, and stage design of Capcom's Mega Man 2. Don't miss Eddie's work over on The Boss Rush Network!
Season 4 Episode 1 - Mega Man 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:22:18
Chris, Hamilton, and Spencer embark on a new season covering Capcom's 11 classic Mega Man side-scrollers. Unfortunately, in order to appreciate the heights which the series would later reach, this requires taking a criti…
Season 3 Bonus Episode - Resident Evil: Death Island [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:24
Hosts Chris, Spencer, and Hamilton got into the eggnog and decided to cover the Resident Evil: Death Island CG movie as a Christmas bonus show. It may not have been a great film, but we all had a great time talking about…
Season 3 Episode 10 - Supergiant & Sonic Wrap-Up [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:24
Hamilton, Spencer, and Chris offer their final thoughts on the topics covered in Season 3. Along the way, they recount their favorite and least favorite games in these franchises, whether there are any similarities betwe…
Season 3 Episode 9 - Sonic Frontiers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:29
Hamilton and Chris explore Sonic the Hedgehog's first "open zone" adventure, Sonic Frontiers (2022). Along the way, they discuss the game's development, its peculiar minigames, and how well it succeeds at shifting the fr…
Season 3 Episode 8 - Hades [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:05:52
Spencer and Chris get downright crunchy with Supergiant's Hades (2020), working through the finer details of how its gameplay systems interact with one another to produce one of the best roguelikes of the last decade. Al…
Season 3 Bonus Episode - Stories Untold [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:49:41
Chris and special guest Celeste Roberts go in-depth with NoCode's Stories Untold (2017). Along the way, they manage to discuss Zork (1977), Cold War-era cyanide tooth capsules, and the Alien film franchise. For more from…
Season 3 Episode 7 - Sonic Generations [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:20
Chris and Hamilton recall the first 20 years of Sonic the Hedgehog by taking a close look at Sega's Sonic Generations (2011). Along the way, they discuss what happened to the property over the preceding decade and why so…