My TalkRadar 5 Year anniversary Retrospective

May 19th is an important milestone. Today is the fifth year anniversary of the TalkRadar podcast. The pilot episode with Chris Antista, Brett Elston, Mikel Reparaz, Tyler Wilde, and special guest Dan Amrich created something magical that has resonated with the online community. (At least more than 1)

TalkRadar was the podcast I ever started listening to. I discovered GamesRadar.com most digged articles from this one website called digg in December of 2008. I loved their features articles due to being somewhat informative but mainly how creative their features were. I didn’t listen until March 2009. I was put off at first. Why would I want to listen to someone talk about videogames for 2 hours? Finally at TalkRadar 43, I decided to give it a shot, and my life was forever changed.

TalkRadar was a show about predominately about videogames. What stuck out the most was the shared experiences of gaming culture with some pop culture. Chris, Brett, and Mikel talked of growing up with gaming during the NES era. Then the games they played as they got older during the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo in their early teens. Then the PS1 and N64. Also Brett Elston’s experiences with the Atari Jaguar. When Mikel Reparaz said “Tomb Raider was created when the industry was starting to grow pubes, they were also growing pubes. They got to experience an era where the videogames were growing up with them. Also there was someone older like Dan Amrich of capturing what it was like growing up in the paleolithic era of gaming.

Never in my life have I heard someone describe all the human emotions through the word boner. Chris Antista is a Beethoven with his boners. Brett Elston timestamping his experiences, and Mikel Reparaz being a giant knowledge bank of the videogames and other strange things. Tyler Wilde with his technical prowess, and Charlie Barratt for his only experiences of point and click adventures with some Chrono Trigger.

After listening to episode 43, I fell in love and decided to go back and listen to 1 to the present episode. I didn’t listen to any music during that period. TalkRadar was with me breakfast, lunch, and shitter I vividly remember Chris Antista cutting his own shit when I was eating down scrambled eggs. It was impossible to finish my scrambled eggs because I was laughing so hard.

From then on, TalkRadar became my best way of remembering time in a weekly basis. I knew where I was and what I was doing, and could remember when I did it by episode number. Episode 50 I remember picking up my Uncle from the airport for my sister’s high school graduation. Episode 55 I was walking the dog down Crow Creek Road in Bettendorf Iowa hearing Mikel Reparaz say “Guillon Don’t get raped!”. And Episode 63 for being the last week I lived in Iowa.

TalkRadar influenced me in music and other games. Helix Nebula is forever associated with TalkRadar for me. Some of the closing songs, like In a Big Country, Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, Alex Chilton by The Replacements I discovered due to TalkRadar.  I picked up Dark Sector for $2.49 off Steam due to Brett Elston’s recommendation. For that price It’s a solid game. I got Vanquish, Ace Combat Assault Horizon, Mass Effect due to TalkRadar.

I created a twitter account, specifically to follow the TalkRadar hosts, and then the fans. Which I started to find out new TalkRadar fans, since there was a good amount of fans on twitter that didn’t post in the forums. I got to find out there was TalkRadar fans spanning 5 continents. On twitter I discovered there were fans in the Philippines, Nepal, Finland, Norway, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Switzerland.

I couldn’t get enough of TalkRadar, after I finished all the episodes, a couple months later I went back and listened to them again.

I became an active participant on the GamesRadar forums. I never had over 1,000+ posts, yet alone having over 5,000 posts on the GamesRadar forums, answering questions about TalkRadar, and commenting on my favorite parts of the show. My presence on answering TalkRadar questions was  fast. It got to the point if someone answered a question before me the users would put inb4TURbo.

My lasting contribution to TalkRadar is probably the TalkRadar Wiki. The most comprehensive online encyclopedia for a videogame podcast. Spanning 400 articles. The origins of the TalkRadar Wiki was in a forum thread about a TalkRadar Encyclopedia. Ampetent had an idea for a forum thread to have as much information of TalkRadar as possible, which is very impractical. Nighthawk205 had the idea of creating a wiki and that would be a lot more easier than having a never ending forum thread.

When the TalkRadar Wiki started, the first 2 weeks was edited heavily. Most of the edits were on the hosts and guest pages. Nighthawk205 laid down the episode template page, which I follow to this day. When the TalkRadar Wiki started, I went back and listened starting to 1 to present episode and wrote down quotes, or stories I thought were funny. Then I posted it to the Wiki. That took me a little over 2 months.

Now the TalkRadar Wiki is a place you can find out things like: How many times Brett Elston mentioned Toys R Us in what context, All the Questions of the Week, The closing songs in TalkRadar, All the questions answered on Ask a Games Jarnalist, All the TalkRadar Hotline calls aired, and how what episodes Chris Antista talked poorly about his mother.

May 2010, on the now extinct forums, there was a thread about a TalkRadar meetup. Would it ever happen?  It took a year later but PAX East 2011 was the first TalkRadar meetup I experienced. Over 40 people showed up to meet Chris, Brett, Tyler, Dan Amrich, and Lizzie, and meet other fans of the show. One thing that stuck out the most was other TDards congratulating me for my contributions to the TalkRadar Wiki. I was never thanked in person for the TalkRadar Wiki until I went to PAX.  Also that a lot of the fans knew who I was when I said TURbo, but I didn’t know who they were since they were forum lurkers. It was neat seeing the culmination of all of the fans and the hosts in having a great time together.

It was unfortunate TalkRadar had to go the way it did, but it inspired the fans to create their own podcasts and websites.

One thing that was great about TalkRadar, was the fan created content. TalkRadar inspired a police dispatcher to become one of the best photoshoppers on the TalkRadar forums.

Some of the excellent artists in my Hall of fame of TalkRadar art are Batman5273, graboids, KREATIVEassassin, 510BrotherPanda, mechamorbo, Twishart, Aeshir,Ventanger, JohnRabbit, hatebreeder, aforextreme, MrSuitMan.

Flabslapper made great edited videos. Kate Reilly wrote an excellent story with Wikiparaz and the Burger Bandit mystery. She did write 4 more stories, but it was at the low point of TalkRadar when Future US was being ruled by an iron fist.

TalkRadar inspired Zabu_San, ElPork, Gunslinger, to create the PCN Gen podcast. Before PCN Gen podcast they made Fan Radar. It inspired Travis Foster to create the short lived 4 episode run of Geekipedia, and then later created Podcast N Bullshit, with Phazon117 and tokengirlstfu.Wildfire567 created a short run podcast in the Summer of 2009, Gamechug podcast.  It also inspired Wildfire_567, Breener, Lando81, and Aeshir to create the GNA FM, which only had a few episodes to successful launch to the internet. Another fan podcast BCubed started by Jake Petersen (Onewingedantista). Also it created the TalkRadar Community Extravangza, which afterwards Alex, Mitch, Matt, Tony, Drew, Kate then spawned Random Assault. Chris Linendoll and Rock Closson, other TalkRadar fans created their own podcast KGB Radio and site Known Griefers Blog. Joe Garcia (Wons23) (PS University) created the PS Firmware Update. Jostein Hakstead from Norway created the  Rad Crew podcast. Cale McKee and his friends created the C-Cubed podcast, nothing in relation to B-Cubed. OriginalMrBibz created a podcast Make Up Your Mind which only had a 2 episode run, but nonetheless gave podcasting a shot. Akd created Refresh Reload. RossBell1984 co created the Ready Player 2 Podcast.

While TalkRadar is gone, the friendships and memories I have made through this podcast are incredible.