Feel free to hear the latest, most epic, close-to-4-hour smorgasmic, 1up yours episode. I remember back in 2004, during my Gamespot fandom days, that they suddenly they started posting the "hotspot" feature, every time I clicked on it the only saw what seemed to be some news headers with little funny thumbnails, and for months, I thought that was the whole feature! I later found out that the main feature consisted of an audio file called a podcast thanks to this handy FAQ http://www.gamespot.com/misc/podcastfaq.html explained by a GIF version of Greg Kasavin (recently removed), my first reaction was "People expect other people to hear them blabber around for more than an hour sitting on their computers, this has to be the dumbest idea ever..." little that I know that this would become my favorite part of this, and all my other gaming websites.
My addiction to the hotspot escalated in me wanting to get them on the road, doing other stuff, like it was meant to be, which pushed me into buying my first, overpriced, battery-powered mp3 player (which I don't know if you still have the remains of).
But I knew that 1 podcast and 2-3 songs wasn't enough to fill my daily work commute, so I sought for more filler podcasts. I subscribed to the top technology & videogames podcasts only to be disappointed of how BORING they were, (I still can't believe that TWIT and the onion and the Muggle podcasts are still the most subscribed podcasts on iTunes). Some of the podcasts that I subscribed to were in fact 1up Yours and EGM live* (*=not actually live).
The first time I tried to hear an episode of 1up Yours I was horrified of the length (holy crap 1.30 hours!), I only heard 5 min. of it and found that the sound quality was horrible and thus their voices were unintelligibly (for me at the time), compared to the hotspot, which always had nice sound quality, both due to the Gamespot Live! studios and the mp3 bitrate. Also there's the fact that the hotspot was hosted by the likeable entity of Rich Gallup, whereas 1up was hosted by Mr. "Who the hell is this know-it-all asshole" Garnett Lee. Suffice to say I didn't listen to another episode until much later that year.
EGM Live* on the other hand, even though it had the same quality issue, was compelling to me because of the already familiar personalities, Shane Bettenhausen, Dan shu, Kathleen Sanders, and the rest of the colorful cast of EGM. Every time one of them came on the mike I got a feeling of "Wow, so this is how Dan Shu sounds like, I can't believe he sounds like an Asian" (later on I found out that DenSho was NOT Dan Shu, later I also found that Mexican EGM was a translation and that Carqui, DenSho and Amenaza didn't magically teleported to the US to do the magazine every month), so at least that kept hooked to their podcast.
Anyway, I eventually gave 1up Yours another try. Hearing the episode didn't do much for me until Luke Smith came on the mic. Holy crap, it was like an insult implosion when he and Shane got on the same room, such chemistry. I slowly started learning everyone’s role, Shane liked Sony, Garnett liked to play devil's advocate (trying to defend the thing that the rest of the cast was currently bashing) and Luke was the one that apparently thought that everything was "retarded" (he is the one that coined that word). Anyway I got hooked on this podcast and my "Why does this thing have to be so long" attitude changed to “I hope this episode lasts for 3 hours", suddenly I found myself caring more about this podcast than the magazine/website itself (I think you might agree).
Never before had I heard such a profound discussion about something with such truthful people, videogame-related or otherwise. I got so into it that I eventually had to influence/force you into listening to them. They were the reason I felt pressured into buying an iPod, up until now they're the primary reason I use my iPod and listen to podcasts, and it would be a stretch to say that "they have changed my life in a meaningful way", but they have DEFINITELY changed the way at look at Games, Information control, Website development, and journalism in general.
With the final episode being with Shane, Garnett and Luke again, I think that everything has come to a full circle; I almost shed a tear during the last 10 min. I feel almost the same feeling that I had after finishing Metal gear, "Why does everything I love have to end", "What's next...", "What will it feel like not looking forward to the next Metal Gear/1UP yours installment”, “War has changed", (wait, scratch that last one).
Anyway there's more that I'd like to say, but this already got WAY longer that I expected, don't to expect anything like this again (but it sure beats the crap out of the 140 word limit on twitter) so to wrap it all up, until we meet again 1UP crew:
EDIT: *comes back after listening to ep. 1 of listenFM*, I guess weekend WILL be confirmed after all :)
Wow dude, nice blogging, keep it up!
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