1Up Shows and Podcasts
1Up Shows and Podcasts was a collection of podcasts hosted by 1Up.com dealing with various aspects of gaming. Most of the shows, like 4 Guys 1Up, were about games and general gaming culture. Others were more specific, such as The Sports Game Guy's Sports Anomaly, which focused on sports games. The network also featured Retronauts, an audio retrospective series that chronicled various retro games and game series. The network had shown significant growth, with several new shows having been introduced in 2007–2008. However, in early 2009 1Up.com was purchased by UGO and its parent company Hearst Corporation from Ziff Davis. This resulted not only in the closure of Electronic Gaming Monthly, but also the loss of over 30 jobs, including several hosts and producers of the site's many podcasts. Because of this, more than half of the network's shows were abruptly discontinued, leaving only a few remaining. While 1Up Yours did not cease to exist, the resignation of the show's co-host Shane Bettenhausen led host Garnett Lee to change the show's name and structure to Listen UP. Several former employees also started their own projects after the firings as well, including Co-Op, the spiritual successor to The 1Up Show, Rebel FM, the follow-up to 1Up FM, and The Geekbox, Ryan Scott's replacement for Lan Party podcast.
There were also several shows that were created after the layoffs. Garnett Lee co-hosted Game Night with Tina Sanchez and David Ellis, a weekly video podcast wherein the hosts broadcast their playthroughs and discussions of unreleased games. Since Lee's departure, hosting duties are regularly shifted. Sanchez also started her own podcast Good Grief, focusing on community interaction, message board pranks and griefing.
Podcasts at 1UP Closure
Games, Dammit!
Referred to as the "flagship podcast", 4 Guys 1UP began as a weekly discussion-centric podcast released on Fridays, hosted by David Ellis with contributions from Jeremy Parish and Scooter Nguyen. It was the follow-up to the successful "1UP Yours" and "Listen UP" podcasts, which were hosted by Garnett Lee. After Lee's departure, the show featured a special guest from outside "the land of editorial". Following Ellis' move to 343 Industries, the show shifted hosting duties to Parish, and finally to Jose Otero.Retronauts
The Retronauts podcast concerned older "retro" games and systems. It was hosted by 1UP editor Jeremy Parish before he handed the reins over to Bob Mackey in mid 2011. It was frequented by Wired magazine's Chris Kohler as well as former 1up editors Scott Sharkey and Ray Barnholt. Often, an episode was devoted to the history of a particular gaming franchise, genre or console system. While often being focused on Japanese games, particularly those from the RPG genre, episodes were devoted to North American titles such as Starcraft. Retronauts was discontinued for a time following its 99th episode, but returned in 2011 as "Retronauts Live". The format was largely the same, except that the show was recorded as a live audio stream, and a portion of the show was dedicated to the hosts taking live call-in questions and comments from listeners. The show was hosted by Bob Mackey at the time of the 1UP Closure under the moniker "Retronauts Prime".Retronauts also produced the supplement video podcast, Bonus Stage, which looked at specific retro titles more closely. After a long hiatus, Bonus Stage was finally updated in September 2009. Retronauts returned to producing video content with Retronauts Lunch Break, though this segment was not available as a podcast. Bob Mackey has also crossed over with the Laser Time podcast network and GamesRadar+.
Retronauts survived the demise of 1UP, first existing independently and supported by crowdfunding services, but later under the auspices of the USGamer website, a subsidiary of Eurogamer.
Former podcasts
The 1UP Show
Beginning October 21, 2005, 1UP.com hosted The 1UP Show, a weekly video podcast. The show often presented previews and reviews of games, though it also focused on video gaming events, interviews with game designers and in-house discussions and debates on gaming topics. After 1UP.com was purchased by UGO, the staff of The 1UP Show was laid off and the show itself was discontinued.Broken Pixels
Broken Pixels was a video podcast that premiered on the April 21, 2006 episode The 1UP Show's "Not The 1UP Show" series, originally billed as "Crapterpiece Theater". Though originally made for the previously stated podcast, the show since branched off into its own series.The show featured former EGM Senior Editor Crispin Boyer, EGM Executive Editor Shane Bettenhausen and regular EGM contributor Seanbaby playing and 'riffing' on famously bad and obscure video games, in similar vein to Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show was updated on a 'whenever-we-feel-like-it' basis for the first thirteen episodes. These original episodes have been dubbed 'Season 0', and also featured other contributors such as former 1UP editors Mark McDonald, Luke Smith, former 1UP/GFW editor Darren Gladstone and 1UP podcast producer Andrew Pfister.
The show began with a sporadic release schedule, with new episodes being released on an inconsistent basis, often months apart. Each episode featured multiple games, and was often around half an hour in length. However, in September 2008, the show began operating on a weekly, seasonal structure. New episodes were released on Tuesdays. To accommodate for this, each episode contained only one game, and episodes were generally about ten minutes long.
The first episode of Season 1 debuted on September 9, 2008 with the crew playing Robocop for the original Xbox. Former 1up/GFW editor Shawn Elliott made a guest appearance on the WWE Crush Hour episode during this season. At the end of the Season 1 finale, a teaser was shown announcing that the second season would be premiering January 6, 2009. However, that was the day of the Ziff Davis layoffs that left more than 30 people out of a job, including the entire cast of Broken Pixels. Furthermore, Seanbaby noted that he caused controversy with "media watchdogs" by his use of the term "faggotiest" in the Spiderman 3 episode at the end of season one. Most fans assumed that the show would not continue and that the segments they filmed would never be released, but season 2 premiered on February 6, 2009, with the Sega CD game, Wirehead.
With the acquisition of 1UP.com by UGO, Shane Bettenhausen joining Ignition Entertainment, Seanbaby joining the Cracked journalist team, and the crew of The 1UP Show being laid off and forming Area 5 Media, Broken Pixels quietly ceased production.
RadiOPM
Hosted by former Senior Editor Joe Rybicki along with co-hosts Dana Jongewaard, Thierry "Scooter" Nguyen and Giancarlo Varanini, RadiOPM was a supplement to the now-defunct Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.EGM Live*
EGM Live* was a supplement to the magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. Originally similar to 1UP Yours, the podcast featured round-table discussions about subjects usually relevant to upcoming magazine issues. As time went on, the podcast became substantially more structured, with the show being composed of separately recorded segments. Such segments included interviews with game developers and "review crew" gaming reviews led by EGM Reviews Editor Greg Ford and a variety of contributors. For a period of time, the podcast would end with a "question of the week," a contest in which fans received prizes for correctly answering a trivia question or writing a short essay.EGM Live* did not have a regular host, but the show was often hosted by Electronic Gaming Monthly Managing Editor Jennifer Tsao.
On June 10, 2008 it was announced that the show would be completely re-structured. The new incarnation of the podcast, 1UP FM, was co-hosted by Nick Suttner and Phillip Kollar.
GFW Radio/LAN Party
Originally CGW Radio, the show was created in early 2006 as a companion podcast for Computer Gaming World. CGW Radio was a PC-centric podcast hosted by Jeff Green and included a regular lineup of editors Shawn Elliott, Ryan Scott, Sean Molloy, and Darren Gladstone. When Computer Gaming World was re-branded as in late 2006, the podcast was retitled GFW Radio to reflect the change. Darren Gladstone left the magazine and podcast in late 2007 to join PC World. In April 2008, Games for Windows: The Official Magazine was discontinued, and the editing staff of the magazine was moved to the PC editing staff for 1UP.com. Sean Molloy left 1UP.com to join Blizzard Entertainment, and recorded his final podcast on June 18, 2008. The podcast continued as GFW Radio until its final episode on September 17, 2008.Though the focus of the podcast was primarily PC-related topics, the unedited, free-form nature of the podcast often led to several other fields of discussion including gaming in general, games press and journalism, entertainment in other mediums, and a variety of stories and tangents. Occasionally featured were comedic segments created by Shawn Elliott such as "Heroes of the Web", which offered "dramatic readings" of unintentionally humorous message board posts on the 1UP.com forums or elsewhere and "Chuff Love," where Anthony Gallegos discussed his romantic quest for a relationship with a girl he met at a local game store.
During its run, the podcast hosted several notable figures within the gaming industry as guests. Some were on the program on a professional level, often to promote games such as Cevat Yerli's guest appearance to promote Crysis. However, other guests came on the program with no specific project to discuss, such as Rod Humble's appearance on the show or American McGee's guest appearance.. Other guests would come on during one of the many special episodes produced during one of the industry's many trade shows such as the Game Developers Conference or E3. These guests included Ken Levine from 2K Boston, Josh Mosqueira and Mark Noseworthy from Relic Entertainment, Warren Spector of Junction Point Studios, Erik Wolpaw and Kim Swift from Valve, and Chris Taylor from Gas Powered Games.
In addition to guests and commentary on games, the podcast was also a forum for gamer memes, including phrases such as 'stoking a game boner', referring to excitement gamers cultivate in anticipation of a release by frequenting message boards and looking for screenshots and information on their object of desire, or 'Banana riding', referring to gamers, often friends offline, who cooperate closely following a leader to enable that person to succeed—typically in a team based competitive game such as an FPS or RTS.
It was announced on September 4, 2008, that Jeff Green would leave Ziff Davis after 17 years to join Electronic Arts to work on the "Sim" franchise. Shortly afterward on September 17, co-host Shawn Elliott also announced that he would be leaving the company to work under Ken Levine as associate producer on the next 2K Boston video game.
The podcast is often affectionately referred to its nickname "97.5 The Brodeo".'.
After the departures of several regular podcast contributors, the final episode of GFW Radio was produced and released on September 17, 2008. In the final episode, Ryan Scott assured that another podcast would "fill the void", presumably with recent GFW Radio contributors Robert "Bobbito/Dr. Max Chill" Ashley and Anthony Gallegos. Such was the case when a test episode was produced on October 7, which was listed under the GFW Radio moniker. On the November 6th, 2008 episode, the successor settled on a name, LAN Party.
LAN Party's host was Ryan Scott, regularly accompanied by Robert Ashley, Anthony Gallegos, 1up Community Manager Tina Sanchez, and former GameVideos producer Matt Chandronait.
After UGO's acquisition of 1UP.com on January 6, 2009, the majority of the cast was laid off, including Ryan Scott, Anthony Gallegos, and Matt Chandronait, leaving LAN Party's last episode to be produced and released on December 23, 2008.
1UP FM
On June 10, 2008 it was announced that EGM Live* would be re-structured into a new program. 1UP FM aired first on June 16, 2008 and was released every Monday. The show, hosted by Nick Suttner and Philip Kollar was more structured than its predecessor, containing several regular segments, including Shelf Life, Top 5, a rant by Anthony Gallegos, Mailbag, and the Backlog, which takes place after the outro every week. The "FM" in the title stands for "Feature Mondays", as the show often centered around one or several main features, including developer interviews or hands-on previews of an upcoming game.Backlog Segment
The show featured a regular segment called the Backlog. The concept of the Backlog was that the hosts play through and discuss a game that received a great deal of critical acclaim, but was mostly overlooked by the gaming masses. Generally, the segment covered one game per month, with the discussion being broken up over the course of four episodes. The segment began with the hosts discussing the acclaimed Team Ico game Shadow of the Colossus. The next game discussed was Psychonauts, developed by Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions. For the final episode of the Psychonauts discussion, the hosts interviewed Tim Schafer.Following Psychonauts, the hosts discussed Indigo Prophecy by Quantic Dream. After the discussion, the game's senior producer Constantine Hantzopoulos appeared on the show to discuss the game's production, including much of the controversy surrounding the game's censorship for its North American release. After Indigo Prophecy, there was a one-off segment dealing with Gripshift before the hosts began their discussion of GSC Game World's.
After the buyout of 1UP.com by UGO, the hosts of 1UP FM were laid off. However, they went on to form their own podcast Rebel FM that has a similar format to 1UP FM.
Legendary Thread
Legendary Thread was a podcast mostly devoted to World of Warcraft and other Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs. It was hosted by Game Videos managing editor Demian Linn. Usual guests included Karen Chu, Luke Smith, Alice Liang, Jason Bertrand, Ryan Scott, Andrew "Skip" Pfister, and Jeff Green.Review Crew
Review Crew was a short-lived video review podcast on 1UP Radio. On the weekly show, members of 1UP's Review Crew discussed the quality of newly released games in a talk show format. At the end of a segment a letter grade would be assigned to the game in accordance to the guest's written review of the game.at1UP
is a shorter show focusing on a "behind the scenes look" at the 1UP offices. The show sometimes has guests and features a short discussion of a variety of topics, Shirk's Cocktail Napkin, and a Final Word segment where the crew discusses whatever they want. The show also includes a "hidden" segment that comes after the main show is finished. This segment usually starts a few seconds after the cast signs off and ends the main show. The segments tend to be on the funny side—a horribly planned bank heist or an interview with "Michael McDonald". Although in the September 30, 2009 show, Matt Shirk announced his departure from the site, leading to an empty 4th chair in the podcast. New guests were cycled in depending on what articles and stories appeared on 1up.com. The final episode was released on April 12, 2011.The podcast rss and the mp3 files seem to be deleted from the server.