Katawa Shoujo on Squadron of Shame's podcast

[AngryJedi]

Hello everyone!

My name's Pete, and I'm a member of an Internet community known as The Squadron of Shame. We used to be a club over on 1up.com who played through the underappreciated games of history and discussed them at great length in forum threads, inspired by an abortive feature on one of 1up's old podcasts. Over the years we've taken on titles as diverse as Psychonauts, Psi Ops, System Shock 2, Star Control II, The Shivah, Pathologic and numerous others.

In recent years (i.e. since 1up's chin-stroking discussion community was practically destroyed through an ill-advised forum merge several years back) we've come to do a lot of our discussion on our podcast, The Squadron of Shame SquadCast. It's available on iTunes, or a link to the RSS feed may be found at our current semi-temporary home and main discussion board here. (Feel free to register and say hi, by the way -- we love meeting new people!)

On the podcast, we like to talk at great length and in considerable depth about interesting games -- preferably straying a little off the well-worn path of mainstream interactive entertainment and into things that some of our listeners may not have thought to investigate without a little gentle nudging.

Katawa Shoujo definitely falls into that category, so we took it upon ourselves to assemble a small group of dedicated individuals who were willing to discuss the game, its contribution to interactive entertainment and the emotional impact it had on each of us.

The resultant podcast can be found here (direct MP3 link) -- we'd love for you guys to have a listen and let us know what you think.

Thanks for your time, and if you decide to take the plunge into listening to our show, we hope you enjoy what you hear!

Big love!
Pete "AngryJedi" Davison
The Squadron of Shame

[gRaViJa]

Cool, i'll download it and have a listen soon. i hope it's better than that guy on youtube crying about Rin being his waifu lol. Seriousl now: I'm sure it'll be an interesting listen.

Edit: Damn, 3 hours long that's loooong! And also: I hear you guys will cover To The Moon as well. Hehe, Reives (the maker of to the moon) is an, uhm, allied game designer of me. World's small.

[encrypted12345]

3 Hours... That's insanely long. I listened to the whole thing anyways, . I liked your analysis of the visual novel medium.

Bombastic, huh... I find that a significant number experienced visual novel players hate this for not being bombastic. Despite being a semi-veteran VN player though, I love Katawa Shoujo for its realism and characterization. It has a very strange power to evoke empathy.

Anyways, come visit the forums some time. It's not just gamers here. There's senor citizens (according to this age poll anyways,) 4channers (A lot of /v/irgins (now /vg/ilantes) loved this game and when the Katawa Shoujo general thread got kicked to /b/, some /b/tards tried it and got that feel. Yes, that /b/), and even the English Professor who's collecting information for an academic paper.

It truly amuses me that a cripple porn visual novel ended up being the Gateway series for many people. Then I remember that my first VN involved romancing a genderbent King Arthur and laugh.

[themocaw]

It truly amuses me that a cripple porn visual novel ended up being the Gateway series for many people. Then I remember that my first VN involved romancing a genderbent King Arthur and laugh.

SABER IS MAI DAMN WAIFU! YOU STAY AWAY FROM HER!

>:[

Seriously, though, F:S/N for the win, although the premise sounds really odd to anyone who has never played or watched it. . . kinda like KS, come to think of it.

[SteelSatsuma]

It was interesting to listen to, and some very good analysis was voiced. Good stuff.

[themocaw]

Very nicely done: very insightful, very analytical, not only of the game but of the greater culture. I think I've found a new podcast to listen to.

By the way, I stopped listening just as you started talking about Digital to avoid spoilers.

[Chronopolize]

Just starting on the final segment, and I'd like to say this is quite brilliant discussion that is happening here. I urge any one who is at all interested to pick this one up and give it a listen.

[AngryJedi]

Hi guys! Thanks so much for your positive comments on here. It means a lot to hear that fans of the game are appreciating our discussion.

We specialise in the more deep, chin-strokey side of gaming discussion, so if you liked what you heard here, do please check out our other episodes, all of which are still available via RSS or iTunes. We like to think we have a unique voice among gaming podcasts that appeals to those who like to explore things a little off the beaten track, or discuss things from a deeper perspective to "THE GRAPHICS WERE NICE."

encrypted12345, I'll certainly do my best to poke my head in around the forums a bit -- seems like a good community around here. I've already delved into the posts with the sheet music for the game -- I'm a pianist so I'm very excited to get to work on learning a selection of tracks to play for people and then surprise them with the fact they're from "just" a game.

themocaw, our discussion of Digital only contained a mild spoiler -- we tried to keep spoilerish talk just to KS, but yes, I do recommend playing Digital before you listen any further. In fact, I recommend playing Digital anyway -- it's an impressive piece of work, and doesn't take long to play through.

Once again, thanks to all of you for your kind words (and your time -- we know 3 hours is long!) and I look forward to getting to know some of you a bit better.

[Shingro]

Evening, I'm the JRPG fan of the squad who made the original hard sell to the squad that kicked off this crazy adventure, I feel I owe KS and the community a lot of thanks since it's really revitalized the squad, as well as brought the old chin strokers out of retirement, and even got my nerdy-ass self onto the podcast. =) I'm not sure where this all goes, but it does seem that through some arcane means, whatever KS touches turns to gold. So thanks to KS and the devs (wherever they went) and the community for their influence, I can't think of a better game to be represented with.


Also, if you're going to poke around the archives of the Squad, don't miss the following episodes

Pathalogic
Persona 3
Barkley's Shut up and Jam Gaiden. (I wasn't around at the time to inform this podcast, don't be too hard on them =P)

We're currently working out what and when we discuss, due to the nature of missions requiring a certain amount of completion by a fair amount of people full mission updates tend to be somewhat infrequent, but now that a lot of the Olde Crew came back in who can say what the future holds.

[andy25100]

I listened to your poscast and enjoyed it even giving me some extra VN's i should try in the future once the fallout from Katawa Shoujo has cleared, the podcast itslef was enjoyable and interesting and i'm looking forward to see what you do next.