[PODCAST] Gaming With The Moms #10: Feelings Are Good

Welcome to Gaming With The Moms, the podcast about gaming with families! Host and Managing Editor of Pixelkin Nicole Tanner takes us through all the big news from E3 this week. She is joined by Pixelkin staff Simone de Rochefort and Courtney Holmes, and freelance writer (and dad) Michael Martin. Check out his latest story for Pixelkin, about a young boy growing up as a competitive Street Fighter player.

You can download this episode here.

Onto the fun stuff!

News & Idle Gossip

• Simone namedrops Chris Charla, who appeared in our Power of Play video! He also presented for Xbox at E3 because, you know, that’s his real job. He also appeared in our game development panel at the EMP Power Up event. Okay, no more bragging.
• Sony announced that they are officially remaking Final Fantasy VII with snazzy new HD graphics! We’ll see that in ten years or so, I guess.
• Simone loves Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, but she recommends watching Advent Children Complete instead of the original film. It makes just a little more sense.

• In the same story, Sony is also still making The Last Guardian!
• We got a new trailer for Star Fox Zero, the “rethinking” of Star Fox for the Wii U. Courtney tries to explain why Star Fox is actually awesome.
• Here’s the SUPER INTENSE Rise of the Tomb Raider demo from Microsoft’s press conference. And here’s the trailer we got at E3 2014, where Lara sees a therapist for her PTSD. We love the continuity from the first game!

In Dreams, you can add assets from other players’ dreams to your own.

• Media Molecule’s new game is bizarre but also awesome. It’s called Dreams, and it lets users 3D model their own surreal dreamscapes.
• The Xbox One is going to be backwards compatible. Michael wants to know why we want to go back and play old games, when we should be looking forward to new ones.
• Michael has every single trophy from Fallout 3, and yet somehow still has a life.
• Danielle Riendeau at Polygon talks about the increased number of women who were presenting, and featured in trailers at E3 this year.
• The Minecraft demo for HoloLens was completely mind-blowing. Watch the full video from the Microsoft press conference.

Saxs Persson interacts with a Minecraft hologram.

What We’re Playing

Michael has been playing lots of Street Fighter of course. He’s written for us before about gaming with his son—who of course, kicks his butt now.

Courtney is playing lots of Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon. She’s also playing Beat Sneak Bandit from Simogo. They’re one of our favorite developers. Check out their latest game, The Sailor’s Dream.

Simone hasn’t been playing anything! She’s a failure! Nah, she went on a great road trip with her mom and saw the Cascade Mountains!

Nicole has been playing…wait for it…Hearthstone. There’s a new mode out called Tavern Brawl that she’s exploring. But she’s also playing the iPad game The Wolf Among Us from Telltale Games. It’s a fairy-tale game, but not for kids. Still, it’s awesome and we really enjoy it.

Nicole’s daughter Ana has been playing Metamorphabet. You can try a demo of the game online right here! Metamorphabet won an Apple Design Award this year, and it’s totally worth it. Ana’s Apps is the series where Nicole shows us the games that Ana loves, and you can watch that right here.

Thanks to Michael Martin for being our guest this week!

Did you like this episode? Make sure to rate us on iTunes! See you next Friday.