One Life Left

Last updated
One Life Left
Olllogo.jpg
Other namesOLL
Genre Video gaming
Running time60 minutes
Country of origin United Kingdom
Home station Resonance FM
Hosted by Ste Curran
Simon Byron
Ann Scantlebury
Original release2006 
present
No. of series8
No. of episodes194 (as of 28 January 2013)
Website http://www.onelifeleft.com/
Podcast http://onelifeleft.libsyn.com/rss

One Life Left is Europe's first and only dedicated videogames FM radio show. [1] [2] It is presented by Ste Curran, Simon Byron and Ann Scantlebury. Earlier host Robert Howells stopped appearing on the show, to be later replaced by Simon. It includes news, reviews, features, competitions and a weekly studio guest. One Life Left is broadcast on Resonance FM, a London community radio station at 19:00 every Monday, and is available as a podcast.

Contents

Guests and features

One Life Left is presented in a magazine style, with guests and features. Guests have included industry figures such as Jon Hare, Charles Cecil, Paul Rose [3] and comedian and presenter Joe Cornish. Features range from comedy sketches (for example, Craig 'The Rage' McClelland's video game poetry and Ms. Snac-Man's "gaming recipes") to views from the industry (for example, Derek Williams' Free Market Economy, from the perspective of a market stall owner) and game reviews (for example Talia Reviews Nintendo Games Because They Are For Kids). The show briefly featured a segment by Ariel Angelotti during her tenure at Q Games, which highlighted Japanese development culture and popular Japanese phrases.

Since 2009, the show has featured contributions from "Dr. Avatar" who presents an Accident & Emergency segment highlighting the misfortune of classic video game characters. Other additions to the complement of features have been Science Officer's Log which parodies the gaming trope of recorded audio logs, and Lonely Hearts by Cara Ellison which involves the generation of dating website profiles for famous game characters.

One Life Left has also recorded from the Develop Conference and Expo. [4] In 2010, they hosted One Laugh Left as part of Nottingham Gamecity 5. [5] This was billed as a night of stand up comedy about video gaming and included turns from each of the three presenters.

Critical reaction

The video games website Kotaku considered One Life Left to be "a sweet blend of light-hearted discussion, music, interviews and ridiculous features", pointing out its uniqueness in gaming and in radio. [6] Guardian Unlimited's Aleks Krotoski and Keith Stuart have both commented on the quality of the show's podcasts. [7] [8]

One Life Left was nominated for the "Best Games Podcast" category both the 2007 and 2008 Games Media Awards, [9] and in 2009, won the GMA "Best Podcast/Broadcast" award. [10]

One Life Left was considered one of the ten best podcasts by thelondonpaper. [11]

Music to Play Games By

In December 2008, One Life Left released Music to Play Games By, a compilation CD of music inspired by video games. It was arranged by Simon Parkin and produced by Andrew Smillie. The album covers various videogame themes and styles, [1] and has been described as "chip-indie". [2] Kotaku considered the album to be an excellent collection of "chiptunes, remixes, even normal songs that are just written about games." [12]

Maraoke: Modded Karaoke

One Life Left also operates a karaoke show called Maraoke (short for Modded Karaoke), hosted by Curran, in which the lyrics to popular songs are adjusted to be about video games. The show is hosted at gaming conventions all across Europe, with the occasional standalone gig being hosted in London. The show was originally called Marioke before changing its name in 2019 to avoid potential legal trouble with Nintendo. Maraoke was featured on The Yogscast's Christmas charity live stream, Jingle Jam, in 2023.

Related Research Articles

<i>Cheez TV</i> Australian childrens television program

Cheez TV was an Australian children's cartoon show, hosted by Ryan Lappin and Jade Gatt, that aired on weekday mornings on Network Ten. It began broadcasting on 17 July 1995 and it ended on 31 December 2004 with the presenters leaving. After eight months of being without presenters, it officially ended on 20 August 2005, and was replaced with Toasted TV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music video game</span> Video game genre

A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".

<i>Edge</i> (magazine) UK video game magazine

Edge is a multi-format video game magazine published by Future plc. It is a UK-based magazine and publishes 13 issues annually. The magazine was launched by Steve Jarratt. It has also released foreign editions in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

<i>1Up Network</i> American entertainment network

1Up.com was an American entertainment website that focused on video games. Launched in 2003, 1Up.com provided its own original features, news stories, game reviews, and video interviews, and also featured comprehensive PC-focused content. Like a print magazine, 1Up.com also hosted special week-long online cover stories that presented each day a new in-depth feature story, interview with the developers, game screenshot gallery, game video footage, and video of the game studio and creators. On February 21, 2013, Ziff Davis announced it would be winding down the site, along with sister sites GameSpy and UGO.com.

<i>Official Xbox Magazine</i> Monthly video game magazine

Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) was a British monthly video game magazine which started in November 2001 around the launch of the original Xbox. A preview issue was released at E3 2001, with another preview issue in November 2001. The magazine was bundled with a disc that included game demos, preview videos and trailers, and other content, such as game or Xbox updates and free gamerpics. The discs also provided the software for the Xbox 360 for backward compatibility of original Xbox games for those without broadband and Xbox Live access. From January 2012, OXM no longer included a demo disc. In mid-2014, the U.S. version was merged into the UK version on the website, which lasted only a few months until Future plc announced that it was closing its website along with all the other websites that Future has published, including Edge and Computer and Video Games. In February 2015, OXM and all of Future's video game websites were redirected into GamesRadar.

<i>BloodSpell</i>

BloodSpell is a 2006 fantasy film produced by Strange Company. BloodSpell employs filming techniques known as machinima, and is the first feature-length production to use BioWare's Aurora Engine, developed for the role-playing video game Neverwinter Nights, to generate the video portion of the film. The film was serially released in short episodes under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License, which allows for redistribution, modification, and creation of fan fiction. Strange Company have asserted somewhat controversially that, as of 2006, BloodSpell, was the largest machinima production. The series features numerous cameo appearances, including several voice appearances from science fiction author Charles Stross.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aleks Krotoski</span> American broadcaster, journalist and social psychologist

Aleksandra Krystyna Theresa Krotoski is a broadcaster, journalist and social psychologist based in the United States who writes and broadcasts about social aspects of technology and interactivity. She currently presents the BBC Radio 4 series The Digital Human.

The 2000s was the fourth decade of the video game industry. It was a decade that was primarily dominated by Sony, Nintendo, newcomer Microsoft, and their respective systems. Sega, being Nintendo's main rival in the 1980s and 1990s, left the console market in 2002 in favor of returning to third-party development, as they once were. Overall the decade saw the last of the low resolution three-dimensional polygons of the 1990s with the emergence of high definition games, and often focused on developing immersive and interactive environments, implementing realistic physics, and improving artificial intelligence. The sixth and seventh generation of video game consoles went on sale, including the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. Notable games released in the 2000s included Half-Life 2, Wii Sports, Grand Theft Auto III, BioShock, The Sims, Metroid Prime, Burnout 3: Takedown,Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Shadow of the Colossus,Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, LittleBigPlanet, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind,World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy X, Perfect Dark, God of War, Left 4 Dead, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Counter-Strike, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,Diablo II, Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,Super Smash Bros. Melee, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Gears of War, Max Payne, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl,Super Mario Galaxy, Halo: Combat Evolved, Tony Hawk´s Pro Skater 3, Guitar Hero, Devil May Cry, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus,Hitman: Blood Money, Grand Theft Auto IV, Halo 2, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Fallout 3, Super Mario Sunshine, Rock Band, Beyond Good & Evil,Portal, Ico, Jet Set Radio, Silent Hill 2, Psychonauts, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves,Halo 3, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Secondfest is a music festival which takes place in the Second Life virtual world. Unlike other musical performances on the web which provide audio through individual web pages for listeners to enjoy by themselves, Secondfest offers an on-line community the ability to experience entertainment together, in a large virtual space.

GameCity is an independent organisation based in Nottingham, UK, which has worked since 2006 with the support of Nottingham Trent University to bring videogames to the widest possible audiences. This has been done through an annual GameCity Festival, described as the "Sundance of the video games world", the GameCity Prize since 2011, and the National Videogame Arcade since 2015. Each year, GameCity hosts talks and presentations from individuals and companies working in the games industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luke Smith (writer)</span> American journalist

Luke Michael Smith is an American writer. He is a staff member at the video game development company Bungie, and is a former video games journalist. Smith wrote for a college newspaper and weekly papers in Michigan before being hired as one of the first new freelance writers for Kotaku. At Kotaku, Smith developed his writing style but soon left the site for a staff position as 1Up.com's news editor. Smith made a name for himself at 1Up, particularly through an article he wrote focusing on problems with the game Halo 2.

<i>Destructoid</i> Video game news website

Destructoid is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017 and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022.

<i>Crimeface</i> 2008 British film by Krishna Stott

Crimeface is an online interactive film thriller / police procedural released in 2008, and directed by Krishna Stott.

<i>Little Atoms</i> Science website, podcast, and magazine

Little Atoms is a website, podcast and magazine dedicated to ideas and culture. The radio show broadcast weekly from London on Resonance FM 104.4. It is hosted by Neil Denny. The website is edited by Padraig Reidy. The first edition of Little Atoms magazine launched in November 2015.

<i>The Virtual Revolution</i> British TV series or programme

The Virtual Revolution is a British television documentary series and interactive web experience presented by Aleks Krotoski, which began airing on BBC Two on 30 January 2010. A co-production between the BBC and the Open University, the series looks at the impact the World Wide Web has had since its inception 20 years ago. The series took a different approach to BBC documentary making by encouraging an open and collaborative production.

<i>Pocket Gamer</i> Website and magazine focused on mobile, portable, and handheld video games

Pocket Gamer is a video game website and former print magazine that focuses on mobile, portable and handheld games. It was launched in 2005 by Steel Media Limited.

<i>VG247</i> Video game blog

VG247 is a video game blog published in the United Kingdom, founded in February 2008 by industry veteran Patrick Garratt. Its current Editor-in-Chief is Dom Peppiatt. In 2009, CNET ranked it as the third best gaming blog in the world.

<i>Polygon</i> (website) Video game website

Polygon is an American entertainment website covering video games and popular culture by Vox Media. At its October 2012 launch as Vox Media's third property, Polygon sought to distinguish itself by focusing on the stories of the people behind games and long-form magazine-style feature articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cara Ellison</span> Scottish video game critic and developer

Cara Ellison is a Scottish video game writer and critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinda Funny</span> Online entertainment company

Kinda Funny is an online entertainment company that produces videos and podcasts on video game culture, film, television, and comics.

References

  1. 1 2 "One Life Left presents Music To Play Games By". Music 4 Games. 2008-12-02. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
  2. 1 2 Keith Stuart (3 December 2008). "Music to play games by..." Guardian.co.uk. London. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
  3. "How Do I Be Goro?". Mr Biffo's Blog. Archived from the original on 2006-10-31. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  4. French, Michael. "One Life Left steps out in Brighton". developmag.com. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  5. "Gamecity One Laugh Left".
  6. Plunkett, Luke. "One Life, Many Podcasts Left". kotaku.com. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  7. Krotoski, Aleks (2007-03-09). "One Life Left podcast". London: Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  8. Stuart, Keith (2007-10-23). "One Life Left and the art of videogame podcasting". London: Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2009-08-17. I like One Life Left, because it has character, it is sometimes rude about games and gaming in general and doesn't feature presenters that indulge in thirty minute monotone diatribes about minor control issues or small areas of disappointing deathmatch level designs.
  9. "Games Media Awards finalists announced". MCV. Archived from the original on 2007-09-13. Retrieved 2007-09-12.
  10. "GMAs 2009: One Life Left named Best Games Broadcast". MCV. 15 May 2019.
  11. Holland, Jessica (28 July 2009). "The 10 best podcasts". thelondonpaper. Archived from the original on 31 July 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-04.
  12. Luke Plunkett (December 3, 2008). "Excellent Radio Show Releases Excellent Games Music CD". Kotaku. Retrieved 2009-04-09.