May 20, 2019
We wanted to do something less intense than a Harvest Moon episode, so we decided to talk about a small niche of games that use mics. And, not for multiplayer! Unsurprisingly, this gimmick wasn't something heavily used in retro games and is not that common in new indie ones, either. Still, I think they're pretty interesting to look at!
Here's links to the two games I talked about:
And, here's a word from Nick:
We’ve been shackled by the controller for too long – raise up your voice against the corded oppressors! And come with your glorious hosts on a journey through games that use the microphone to control the on-screen action.
From the earliest Japan-only Famicom games up through the Dreamcast era, developers had to think a little outside the box and – in every case besides the Famicom, which included a microphone built into the second controller – had to justify to publishers the cost of including extra hardware and a larger box for their game that would fit the mic. Some were huge hits, but pretty much all of those were rhythm games. We found the weirder ones, from a samurai pinball game to a… game where you teach a female humanoid robot to speak and/or love? Also Seaman and Hey You, Pikachu!
Come listen to us speak into a microphone. If this was a game, maybe we’d win!