A change from the usual (Patreon)

Hi everyone, we're taking bit of a different approach this week. The early access episode we had originally planned for this week (Monkey Island, feat. Ron Gilbert) kind of fell to the side when Nintendo President Satoru Iwata died. As it happens, we were in the middle of recording a PlayStation 20th anniversary episode for September when the press release announcing Mr. Iwata's passing hit, and we've decided to release that episode (our raw reactions included) ahead of its intended schedule and run it both here right now and on our usual iTunes/USgamer/Retronauts.com podcast feed in a few hours. Retronauts is, after all, a show about gaming history, and this once we found ourselves reacting to video game history as it happened, sorrowful as the event was. 

It seemed weird to us to run an episode with an impromptu moment of silence and tribute to one of gaming's most important influencers months after the fact. And it also seemed in poor taste to hold it as a paid exclusive. So, as Mr. Iwata so often said: Please understand. This is not the typical Retronauts process, but neither has this been a typical week in games.

We'll return to our regular schedule with a backer-exclusive episode next week, per usual.

Of course, there's much more to this episode than that moment of shock! There's also 90 minutes of excellent conversation about the PlayStation's origins with guest Shane Bettenhausen (who else would we invite to tackle this topic with us?) — tons of facts, memories, and speculation about the past. So we hope you'll enjoy this unusual tribute to both PlayStation and Mr. Iwata. Thanks for your support and understanding.