Electric Underground Podcast

About Electric Underground Podcast

http://electricunderground.io/ The Electric Underground is a podcast dedicated to shmups (also known as shoot-em ups or STGs) that interviews various members of the community and covers many aspects of the genre. The podcast is intended to help demonstrate how rewarding a genre shmups really are. The Electric Underground is open format and welcomes all members of the community on as guests, you don't need to be, popular, famous, well-known, or anything like that. I also encourage you check out my website (with actual content) and YouTube!

Publisher

Mark MSX

Category

leisure

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Dec 2021

Latest episode

7 Sept 2023

Latest episodes

65 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Sept 2023

   Are Fighting Games Improving? EVO 2023 Extensive Discussion with Quash (Guilty Gear XX Player)

   Are Fighting Games Improving? EVO 2023 Extensive Discussion with Quash (Guilty Gear XX Player). In today's epic video, Quash and I discuss the past, present, and future of fighting games, leading up to our thoughts on EVO 2023. And for the first time in a long time, I'm actually interested and excited to watch it this year. As of late I have been playing a lot more Tekken and Virtua Fighter, but I'm also interested in a lot of games being played. We go over our thoughts an avalanche of topics, such as: The decline and future of 3D fighting games, Sales vs Tournament entries, Steam Charts vs Tournament entries, the homogenization of game mechanics, the importance of netcode for upcoming pro players, sluggish UI Design, the issues with online Matchmaking, the function of rank modes and why they need fixed, Differences in perception in JP and NA scenes, is the EVO gladiator format still the best, or should they start to look more into leagues? The Final Year of Tekken 7, should Marvel happen every year, the sleeping giant that is the Street Fighter IP, the uncertain fate of Project L, the importance of graphical presentation, my love and concern for Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive, and so much more. The games and tournaments we discussed are: Street Fighter 6 - 7k entrants Guilty Gear -Strive- 2.4k entrants Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate - 449 entrants Tekken 7 - 1.5k entrants The King of Fighters XV - 666 entrants Melty Blood: Type Lumina - 554 entrants Dragon Ball FighterZ - 838 entrants Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 - 1.3k entrants

2. 

   7 Sept 2023

   Shmups VS Speedrunning, Natural Vs. Fan-Made Meta | Ft. @neoxaquas

   Shmups VS Speedrunning, Natural Vs. Fan-Made Meta | Ft. @neoxaquas . Today's topic has been a subject that has fascinated me for a long time, the difference between shmup scoreplay meta and speedrunning time meta. What's interesting is that for a long time, I've heard speedrunners talk about scoreplay in the tone of an outdated style of competitive design. Like if you watch the history of speedrunning video by Karl Jobst, he describes score play as essentially the ooze from which the glory of speedrunning was born. This makes some sense if you only look at speedrunning from their community perspective. However, over the years I have become more skeptical of community / fan made meta (see my discussion of the subject with the Crimson Blur about Melee) and in today's video I am joined by Aquas who is the perfect guest on the topic as he has world records in both speedrunning and shmup score play (a rare accomplishment!). We cover a variety of fun topics, including his world record progression in Pink Sweets, and the heart of the conversation for me is what are the strengths and weaknesses of fan-made meta, like speedrunning, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of natural built in meta like scoreplay. In the end, I find that I greatly prefer the natural meta of scoreplay (and fighting game tournament play) because it is less arbitrary and prone to manipulation from fellow players and outside forces (besides the developer). However, this doesn't mean that I don't think speedrunning in itself isn't a cool idea, and I even offer what I think is the best solution for the issue in the form of what M2 Shottriggers have been doing with their shmup ports. Imagine if Nintendo actually put some care into their wave of ports and re-releases, and included speedrunning modes and leader boards in their ports. Also I love that Aquas brought up how heavily nostalgia plays into a speedrun game's popularity, because there are tons of speedruns that I think could be fascinating (Dead to Rights Super Cop), but sadly the non-nostalgic games tend to be extremely under-explored. That being said, there are also issues that can rise up from relying solely on the natural meta of a game, like Battle Garegga and its infinite milk, so again I think this is where having robust ports with patches really smooths out a lot of issues, other wise competitive score play is going to rely very heavily on replay analysis and community leader boards and we've seen enough "I GOT A CHEATED RUN PAST THE MODS!" vids for a lifetime.

3. 

   7 Sept 2023

   The Crimson Blur, Has Smash Melee Sabotaged Itself?

   The Crimson Blur, Has Smash Melee Sabotaged Itself?This is a FANTASTIC Conversation, even if you aren't plugged into Melee we discuss a lot of relevant topics about game design and competitive integrity. In today's episode,  @TheCrimsonBlur  (https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCd0Gmuf4CjnyhApIsGud9kQ) and I talk about the current state of Super Smash Bros Melee and have an open conversation about many of my thoughts and critiques of how things are going in competitive Smash right now. I have followed Melee for over a decade now and in this time I think the scene has become increasingly insular and unable to see some of its decisions and ideas from an outside perspective, so I think if you are a fan of Melee or not this conversation is going to be a breath of fresh air outside the usual talking points that you hear repeated on Twitter and on streams over and over. We cover a lot of subjects, but some of the main topics are: Who is Melee's REAL father? As I feel Sakurai is heavily over-creddited for the creation of what we love about Smash 64 and Melee. The nature of Melee as being a community made meta, rather than a natural meta, and how this leads to a lot of more radical decisions when it comes to rule sets (even going so far as to modify the game itself). I talk about the current culture of smash, that obsesses over the e-celeb aspects of its players and personalities, but largely ignores the actual tournament organizers and people who support the scene's infrastructure. Of course we touch on the Nintendo vs Melee community controversy and I share my thoughts on how the community should study Nintendo's motivations more, rather than always relying on social media and fan backlash to protect itself (which I do not believe will work forever). We talk about the recent ruleset changes to ban wobbling and add edge grab limits, and how I feel that these rule changes are reactionary and targeted, rather than being a fair case of assessing outliers in a ruleset. Then there is the sanctioned cheating that is occurring in the ruleset in terms of allowing macros and input processing in the Smash Box as well as the Goomwave. I explain my philosophy behind genuine hardware mods (physical mods) vs cheating mods (introduction of electronics and input processing) and remind the world that Blur, many years ago, predicted these issues but was ignored. Follow Blur at: https://twitter.com/OXY_Crimson Awesome thumbnail by  @boghogSTG  (https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCfYP1vX_BxJtQ0pGq4TPYkA)

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

12 ratings

Spotify

4.8 / 5

22 ratings

Contact Electric Underground Podcast

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.