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PODCAST

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

In My Perfect Console, Simon Parkin, award-winning author video game critic for The Observer invites well-known guests from the worlds of gaming, film and television, music, comedy and more to pick the five video games they would like to immortalise on a fictional games machine. They discuss those five games in chronological order of release, interspersed with biographical chat about the guest’s life and career –– a lens that often leads to new and unexpected insights."Thoroughly modern and ahead of

leisure video games

All Episodes

1:11:51

Iain Cook, musician (Chvrches).

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/05/01

My guest today is a Scottish musician, producer, and pop star. In 2003, while studying at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, he met Martin Doherty, who asked my guest to produce a record for his band. The two remained friends, and later played together in the post rock group Aereogramme.In 2007, after Aereogramme disbanded, my guest bought himself an analogue synthaser. Four years later he and Doherty joined up with the music journalist and singer Lauren Mayberry to form the synth pop group

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1:11:10

Ellie Gibson, comedian (Scummy Mummies).

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/28

My guest today is an award--winning journalist, presenter, and one half of the comedy double act Scummy Mummies. Born in South London, my guest joined Sony in 2001 and there wrote the manuals for first-party PlayStation games.She moved into journalism, covering games for a variety of publications, including Eurogamer, The Guardian, Metro, and Vice. In 2013 she met aspiring comic Helen Thorn and together the pair decided to form a double-act to celebrate the scummier side of parenting.Since then,

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1:10:01

Ronan Farrow, investigative journalist, New Yorker.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/24

My guest today is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist. Born in New York City he earned his degree in philosophy at just fifteen. While a teenager he served as a UNICEF Spokesperson for Youth, advocating for children and women caught up in the Darfur crisis in Sudan. In 2009, at 22 years old, he became a special advisor to the Obama administration, then a Rhodes Scholar, earning his PhD in political science at Magdalen College, Oxford.It was his work detailing allegations of

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1:05:34

Dan Vecchitto, gamemaker (Trombone Champ).

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/20

My guest today is the American creator of one of 2022’s funniest games. In Trombone Champ, you play as a trombonist and must blast your way through a setlist of classical pieces, national anthems, and traditional songs in a brilliant and riotously silly reinterpretation of Guitar Hero.After a journalist for PC Gamer posted a video of himself ruining Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the game last year, Trombone Champ became a viral sensation, propelling my guest and his wife collaborator into the

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57:03

Charles Cecil MBE, gamemaker (Broken Sword, Beneath a...

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/17

My guest today is a legendary British video game designer. While a student at Manchester University, a friend invited him to write a text adventure which led him to work for the video game publishers US Gold and, later, Activision. In 1990 he co-founded Revolution Software in the North of England.After releasing Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky, he began work on Broken Sword, a world-spanning adventure game starring the American patent lawyer, George Stobbart and his French girlfriend,

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1:03:22

Grace Curtis, science fiction author.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/13

My guest today is a video game critic and one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction writing. Born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, she graduated from the UEA with a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing in 2019. Since then, she has worked as a freelance critic, contributing to Edge magazine and Eurogamer, and with the game publisher Future Friends, part of the team that helped bring you indie hits such as Vampire Survivors, Cloud Gardens and Heaven’s Vault.She recently published her

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1:12:32

Erik Wolpaw, writer Portal 1 & 2.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/10

My guest today is an American writer for some of the funniest video games yet made. In the nineties he and a friend founded the website Old Man Murray, a satirical online publication that poked fun at video gaming’s sacred cows, and established a tone still prevalent across the internet today. The site was read by Gabe Newell, creator of Half-Life, who later hired both writers.At Valve my guest collaborated on a new game in which a vindictive artificial intelligence chastises players as they solve a

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52:34

Sir Ian Livingstone, co-founder Games Workshop.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/06

My guest today is an English fantasy author and champion of the video game industry. In 1975, while in his mid-twenties, he founded a boardgame company, Games Workshop, which soon caught the attention of the American creators of a new tabletop game, Dungeons and Dragons.My guest brokered a deal to sell D&D in the UK as a mail order company, and in 1977 opened the company’s first retail shop in South London. In 1982 he published the first of the Fighting Fantasy books, which have now sold more than

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59:05

Susan Calman, comic, writer, presenter.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/04/03

My guest today is a Scottish comedian, television presenter and writer. While studying law at the University of Glasgow, she spent three months in North Carolina working with criminals on death row. After she graduated, she became a corporate lawyer, and soon started performing as a stand-up in the evenings. After seven years, she left the legal profession behind to become a full time comic, winning the Best New Scottish Comedian at the Real Radio Variety Awards in 2009.Since then she has become a

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1:06:54

Henk Rogers, the man who bought Tetris.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/03/27

My guest today is a Dutch video game designer and entrepreneur. While a student at the University of Hawaii, he’d while away the hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. After he moved to Japan, he bought a computer and used it to develop a role-playing game of his own, called Black Onyx, tailored to the Japanese market. When the game’s backer pulled out of the deal, he decided to self-publish the game, and borrowed $50,000 from a friend to set up Bullet-Proof Software.Black Onyx sold

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1:14:25

Jake Solomon, game designer (Marvel’s Midnight Suns;...

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/03/21

My guest today is the American designer of some of the finest strategy video games yet made. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Computer Science in 2000, he accepted a job to become a business consultant. Before he arrived for work, however, he saw an advertisement for position at Fireaxis, the development studio founded by the legendary designer, Sid Meier, which he successfully applied to.Having worked as a programmer onCivilization III and IV, in 2012 he relaunched

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1:05:08

Phil Wang, comedian.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/03/13

My guest today is a is a British-Malaysian stand-up comedian and comedy writer. Born in the UK, when he was one week old his parents moved to Malaysia, where he attended school until the age of sixteen. The family then returned to England, moving to Bath in Somerset, which my guest once described as “a spa town for people who find Cheltenham too ethnic'.While studying Engineering at King’s College Cambridge, he joined the Footlights drama club, of which he later became president. Since graduating,

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54:30

Shahid Ahmad, former director, Sony PlayStation.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/03/06

Shahid Ahmad was a schoolboy living on a London council estate when he sold his prized BMX bike to raise money for programming books and taught himself to write computer games. After several knock-backs, in 1983, at the age of seventeen, he sold a game for £300 to a commercial publisher. He soon made a name for himself in the emerging Britsoft scene, programming the Commodore 64 version of Jet Set Willy, which sold more than a million copies. Having worked on dozens of his own games, included

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1:08:49

Phil Fish, creator of Fez.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/02/27

My guest today is the reclusive designer of one of the greatest video games yet made. He studied game design in Montreal and, after a brief stint working at Ubisoft, left to begin work on a game of his own, a platformer that combined the art style of the Super Nintendo classics of his youth, with perspective-shifting innovations of his own.Six years in the making, Fez launched in 2012 to near universal acclaim, part of the first wave of so-called indie games. After featuring heavily in thefilm

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1:04:13

Heather Anne Campbell, comedian, screenwriter (Rick...

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/02/20

My guest today is an Emmy-nominated writer, sketch comedian, voice actor and performer. As a teenager she studied improv comedy at the famous ImprovOlympic studio in her home city of Chicago, training that prepared her for when she later starred on Whose Line Is It Anyway and the sketch comedy show Key and Peele.She has worked on the writing staff of Saturday Night Live, The Twilight Zone and, most recently, the sixth season of Rick & Morty. Throughout her career she has also written and talked

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1:06:36

Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/02/14

My guest today is the American co-creator of one of the longest-running and most popular independent games yet made. In high school he and his older brother Zach designed adventure games based on fantasy and science fiction stories they invented together. He taught himself computer programming and received fifteen offers to enrol in PhD math programs.At Stanford University, he and his brother continued work on a procedural adventure game called Dwarf Fortress, in which players guide successive

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59:25

Dara Ó Briain, comedian.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/02/07

My guest today is a stand-up comedian, television presenter and Irish national treasure. He studied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at University College, Dublin, where during a debate, he cracked a joke, made the audience laugh, and forever doomed himself to chasing that high.Since then, he has toured the world as a comic, as well as becoming a prolific television host: he has chaired Mock the Week, Have I Got New For You, Blockbusters, Robot Wars, Stargazing Live, and the video game-themed

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1:06:00

Ashly Burch, actor (Mythic Quest, The Last of Us,...

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/01/31

[Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of addiction to prescription pain medication and overdose.]My guest today is an American writer and performer who stars in Apple TV’s Mythic Quest series, and who has, in recent years, voiced some of video gaming’s best-loved characters. She grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and rose to prominence via the web series Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’, in which she starred alongside her brother, Anthony. Since then she has become a prolific voice actor for cartoons

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59:41

Josh Wardle, creator of Wordle.

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/01/24

My guest today is a software engineer who, in 2021, released a word game that soon became a global obsession. He grew up in a Welsh farming village, attended the Royal Holloway University, then moved to North America to study for a Masters. In 2011, after graduating, he joined the staff of the website Reddit, where he began to design experimental games such as The Button, Place and, in his spare time, a game called Wordle.Several years later he returned to the Wordle prototype, which he finished and

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9:32

Trailer

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin ·

2023/01/16

Welcome to My Perfect Console with author, New Yorker journalist and The Observer's video game critic, Simon Parkin.Each week a guest picks the five video games they would like to immortalise on their very own fictional games console.Trailer episode featuring clips from forthcoming episodes with Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, and Charles Cecil MBE, co-founder of Revolution Software, creator of the Broken Sword video game series. Be attitude for gains.

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