Devs Play

Double Fine’s Greg Rice is joined by Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood Studios, for a full play-through of the beloved 1994 platformer "The Lion King." Louis tells the story of how, with a small team and a tight schedule, Westwood developed the spiritual successor to the 16-bit classic "Aladdin" at a time when action platformers were still king and the Disney Renaissance was in full swing.

Programmer on Costume Quest 2 and Mother superfan Ben Burbank shows off selected scenes from the entire trilogy and explains the complicated history of this beloved cult series. Featuring a mix of Japanese and English releases, fan translations, and imported hardware, Ben takes us on a journey through the bizarre cultural mashups and heartfelt story that define Mother.In the first chapter of this three part episode, Ben presents Mother, the Famicom RPG that spawned the cult classic series. Never released in the US yet still translated internally by Nintendo, the build was eventually leaked out into the wild.

Part 2 brings us Mother 2, or Earthbound, as it is known in the West. Building on and improving nearly all aspects of the original, this release saw a limited run in the US that was perhaps cursed by it's oversized packaging and strange marketing campaign.

The trilogy ends with Mother 3, a title which began development for the N64 DD unit before being switched over the the Game Boy Advance due to technical issues. Still unreleased in the US, a translation was created by the Starmen.net community to help fans in the US finally experience this emotional end to the series.

Massive Chalice producer Anthony Vaughn and artist Geoff Soulis take a trip to the legendary game dungeon of Backbone Entertainment head Mike Mika to play the unreleased Gauntlet DS. The plug was pulled on Gauntlet DS shortly before its release after unfortunate events caused the title to be bumped from one publisher to another. Hear the untold story of how this labor of love never saw the light of day.

In true Gauntlet fashion, Mike, Anthony, and Geoff tackle the campaign in multiplayer wireless. Much of the game is explored up to the first boss fight, showing off the "greedy co-op" gameplay hooks that made Gauntlet a hit.

Mike, Anthony, and Geoff try out the new (at the time) multiplayer deathmatch mode. Backbone created a bunch of unique arenas just for deathmatch, with modes like free for all, team play, and capture the flag. This closing episode also includes the final thoughts on the games development .

Hack N Slash creator Brandon Dillon and producer Matt Hansen get to the roots of Brandon’s inspiration by cracking open the NES classic The Legend of Zelda, literally. After taking apart the cartridge, de-soldering and dumping the rom, and booting the game up in an emulator, Brandon sets about altering the running memory of the game to cheat his way through and unlock some unexpected secrets about how the game was developed.Part 1 features Brandon explaining his personal history with the game along with some of the motivations behind it's development.

Part 2 features Brandon and Matt taking apart the Zelda cart to get to the sweet, sweet rom inside.Hack N Slash creator Brandon Dillon and producer Matt Hansen get to the roots of Brandon’s inspiration by cracking open the NES classic The Legend of Zelda, literally. After taking apart the cartridge, de-soldering and dumping the rom, and booting the game up in an emulator, Brandon sets about altering the running memory of the game to cheat his way through and unlock some unexpected secrets about how the game was developed.

Brandon and Matt prepare to play the Zelda rom in the best way possible- by disassembling an NES controller and re-wiring it to work as a PC USB controller.Hack N Slash creator Brandon Dillon and producer Matt Hansen get to the roots of Brandon’s inspiration by cracking open the NES classic The Legend of Zelda, literally. After taking apart the cartridge, de-soldering and dumping the rom, and booting the game up in an emulator, Brandon sets about altering the running memory of the game to cheat his way through and unlock some unexpected secrets about how the game was developed.

Brandon alters the running memory of the rom in real time, causing some interesting changes to happen in the game.Hack N Slash creator Brandon Dillon and producer Matt Hansen get to the roots of Brandon’s inspiration by cracking open the NES classic The Legend of Zelda, literally. After taking apart the cartridge, de-soldering and dumping the rom, and booting the game up in an emulator, Brandon sets about altering the running memory of the game to cheat his way through and unlock some unexpected secrets about how the game was developed.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.This first part introduces us to JP and his long history with Doom before taking a trip to John Romero's house to kick off the marathon play session.

Part 2 features Doom's first iconic level, Hangar. John Romero is just warming up as he starts to lay down some of the basics behind his creation process.Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.

In this special bonus episode of Devs Play, JP LeBreton walks John Romero through a demake of the Bioshock level "Arcadia" made in the Doom 2 engine.

In the season finale of DEVS PLAY, speedrunner Stephen "SMK" Kiazyk sits down with Tim Schafer and members of the Psychonauts development team to demonstrate how certain bugs and glitches can be exploited to skip entire sections of the game.

The first season of Devs Play is wrapped! Check out some highlights from our playthroughs of Lion King, Earthbound, Legend of Zelda, Gauntlet, Doom, and Psychonauts! We also recently added an hour long bonus episode of John Romero playing Jp's de-make of the Bioshock stage "Arcadia" in the Doom 2 engine. Enjoy, and thanks for watching!