[Coco] Nick Marentes reviews and interviews

[Steve Strowbridge]

I started a journey that began when Ed Snider sent me an RGB to S-Video
adapter that allowed me to view my Coco 3 on my PC via live analog capture,
and this has sprung a well of (hopefully) quality game play videos
featuring over 30 years of Coco 3 gaming history.

This has been going on all September long, as I created the unofficial
"month of Coco gaming marathon", which should, as this point, become and
international holiday, all in favor?

The month of September has rolled into October and the daily game play
videos (and other "bonus" content like new versions of the CocoFEST! live
jam) have continue to flow from this eternal well.

Yesterday, much to my surprise and gratitude, Nick agreed to co-host a
review of his revolutionary game "Gate Crasher", which I not really seen
too much of.

But he didn't just co-host it with me, he came up with an entire concept on
how to present this game, from the question "Can the CoCo do a Doom-like
game?" to showing Sock Master's Gloom 2 demo, which was the inspiration and
engine utilized, and then getting into the nuts and bolts of the game play.

He also had the crazy idea of, why don't you try reading some of these
descriptions in different character voices, which led to quite a bit of
hilarity on our hour and a half Skype call.

We ended up with a lot of really bad fake celebrity impressions, with the
likes of Doc Emit L. Brown, from Back to the Future, a really bad Movie
Announcer voice, a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger, some Dirty Harry, and
even a little Duke Nuke 'Em.

A 45 minute non-stop recording session was the result of this, and a very
entertaining 25 minute game play video, including blooper reel was the
fruits of that labor.

The Gate Crasher video can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/ZI0zc2EZWvY

During the post-production and editing of this video, we also managed to
get Nick, Curtis Boyle and myself together for the world premier and
unveiling of Nick's latest game, Pop Star Pilot.

Nick sent us eval copies to test how long it will take to ship from
Australia to North America, as well as to check the packaging for any
typos, errors, etc., (there were none, and the packaging is quite good).

So, we squeezed together a video that shows the un-boxing of the Pop Star
Pilot package, which is top notch quality,  a game play review of the first
Zone, of the game, and a lot of commentary from the author himself, about
the game design, the philosophy, thought and other things that went into
it, as well as some babbling from Curtis and myself about our experiences
in play testing the pre-release versions.

That video can be found here:
https://youtu.be/Y_x2dzNtytI

I can't thank Nick enough for his generosity of sharing his time, talent,
and insight with us all, I am beyond honored and humbled by it.  The 14
year old kid in me is still kicking, screaming, and pinching himself, that
I am able to personally speak with the many great people who have been part
of the CoCo's history, and I'm thankful every day.

Long live the CoCo, and Hey? You got your Coco 3 yet?

Steve Strowbridge, aka
The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
http://ogsteviestrow.com
ogsteviestrow at gmail.com