Chris Smith is joined by regular host Paul Monaghan and special guest Rob Leane, gaming editor for the Radio Times. We discuss Rob's career so far, the beloved status of Radio Times and how it came to have a gaming editor, as well as an extended discussion about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and its implications for modern games jouralism.
It's worth a listen to enjoy Paul forgetting that he is a host on this podcast, and instead take the opportunity to be interviewed for his work on Amiga Addict and Pixel Addict.
Chris and Paul once again realise almost another year has gone by since they last recorded.
Join us as we catch up on the year just gone, and manage to almost entirely avoid talking about Christmas.
You wait weeks for a podcast, then two hours come along at once.
Chris is joined by returning host Paul to look at their highlights from the games that have been announced for the year ahead. With a brief diversion to discuss the Amiga Mini, because there was no chance of them staying on topic.
Chris Smith the Newer is joined by returning hosts Jake and Tommy to discuss the last 12 months, and what they've been up to in life and videogames since Maximum Power Up last released an episode.
Chris Smith mk 2 is joined by returning host Tom Charnock to share fond memories of Atari’s much maligned console. They cover their own introductions to the console, and discuss their favourite games on the platform.
As always, if you enjoy this episode, please take the time to leave us a review on iTunes, or wherever else you choose to listen to your podcasts. If you want to continue the conversation, or give us any feedback, feel free to contact us on any of the socials below:
Our latest guest is Ashley Day, currently employed by Team17. Over this three hour chat we discuss all aspects of his career.
Starting out writing for GamesTM, Ashley discusses his love of games mags and the challenges faced in his time on the magazine including getting interviews.
In 2012 he moved to Nintendo working in Digital Marketing which involved coming up with some fantastic ideas to help drive Nintendo franchises.
Now at Team17 he shares a few thoughts on a childhood dream working for a local company, the A500 Mini featuring several Team17 games plus more.
We hope you enjoy the show and thanks to Ashley for his time.
This episode we are joined by two guests, both writers and they also produce their own podcast.
Samuel Roberts and Matthew Castle join Paul to discuss their career working on games magazines.
Both starting in the mid '00's we cover more recent gaming discussing the PS3, PS4, Wii, DS, X360 etc. Working on Official Nintendo Magazine, NGamer, X360 Magazine, PC Gamer and more game us lots of memories to chat about.
There are some great stories shared including trips away, challenges of ending magazines and Samuel's experience with The Walking Dead.
We hope you enjoy the show and thanks for listening.
Our 42nd magazine related guest is Tim Ponting. Paul spoke to Tim about his career in games magazines and PR. Starting out on drumming magazine Rhythm, he soon joined Dennis Publishing on the much loved magazine Zero.
He shares some memories of being editor and the challenges he faced against other magazines, coverdisks and more. From there we go onto his time on PC Zone and how the industry changed, the rivalry with PC Gamer, and what it was like to work with the late Felix Dennis.
Finally we cover his time on Official Dreamcast mag, PR role at Activision which led to an amazing Call Of Duty 2 event plus much more.
We hope you enjoy the interview and thanks to Tim for his time.
Paul is joined by best selling author and journalist, Keith Stuart.
Keith started his career in the 90's at Big Red Software helping write game manuals. However in 1995 previous MPU guest Jason Brookes gave him his first games magazine role on Edge.
We discussed his memories of working on Edge at such an important time in the games industry. As well as this we discuss his work on DC-UK and how the mag upset Sega.
Also covered is how he began writing for The Guardian and how that role evolved as well as taking the leap into writing novels (his latest Frequency Of Us recently released).
We hope you enjoy the show and thanks to Keith for his time.
The same motley crew as the last bonus episode return for another pandemic related show, as Chris, Chris, Jake and Arron do their best to appear like they still have it together as we approach the anniversary of the pandemic.
As ever, this show is as much about life as anything else, but if you just want the games chatter, I'd skip the first 20 minutes. .
As ever, if you like the episode or have any feedback, we'd love it if you'd hit us up on the socials and leave reviews. More importantly though, stay safe everyone and look after each other. We'll be okay.
There is plenty for Commodore Amiga fans in this episode. Paul sits down to speak to Marcus Dyson who spent 4 years on Amiga Format, as well as some time at Team 17.
Starting in 1990 at Future Publishing Marcus started off as an artist for the magazine before moving to editor. He shares some of his memories as well as challenges faced on the magazine at that time. We discuss reviews, cover disks, fave games and more.
In 1994 Marcus moved onto Team 17 helping bring several well known Amiga titles to other systems including Worms. He shared some great stories with us including the Tower Assault FMV film for CD32.
We also cover how SPOnG website came about and what the original aim for it was.
A massive thank you to Marcus for his time and we hope you enjoy the interview.
Our latest interview is with VP of IGN, John Davison.
John started his career in the games industry over 30 years ago with his first fulltime role on Games-X magazine.
John shares the challenges he faced on a weekly games magazine before moving onto Megadrive Advanced Gaming, PC Zone and more.
We discuss how PC Zone became one of the leading PC magazines and some of the standout features in the mag.
Moving onto his time in America we cover EGM, GamePro, Metacritic, 1Up podcast, Gamespot and loads more! To finish we briefly mention his most recent role at IGN.
A massive thank you to John for his time and we hope you enjoy the show.
This episode we are joined by a huge guest! Gary Whitta joins Paul to discuss his career in games journalism, writing Hollywood screenplays, Animal Crossing talkshows and more!
Covering a 30 year plus career, Gary started off on Commodore User being an owner of the Amiga which helped get his big break on magazines. He shares several stories about his time on Games-X, The One, ACE, CVG and more. However the main magazine that changed so much for him was PC Gamer which he edited in the UK before eventually moving to America and taking over on the US version.
He shares a lot of the challenges he faced in America before trying his hand at writing screenplays for Hollywood. We briefly discuss Book Of Eli, After Earth and a little film called Star Wars Rogue One.
Finally we cover how 2020 lockdown life led to his Animal Crossing talkshow and how crazy it has been to have several big name guests.
We hope you enjoy the show.
In this third pandemic related bonus episode, the two Chris Smiths are joined by Jake and Arron for as they check in on each other, and talk life, games and a bit about the new systems. Oh and some of the hottest takes on the PS3 since 2006...
As ever, if you like the episode or have any feedback, we'd love it if you'd hit us up on the socials and leave reviews. However, self-care is more important. Look after yourselves and each other first. We'll be okay.
Tim Weaver has been writing for decades. Currently he has 10 David Raker novels under his belt, a very popular crime/ thriller series.
He started his career at Future Publishing back in 1996 on Nintnedo magazine Total! Tim shares the early days on the mag as well as other Snes magazine Super Play before he went on to work on the magazine that gave him his happiest years - N64 Magazine.
N64 mag still has so many fans today and was the go to magazine for N64 owners. As well as sharing stories and experiences here we also cover NGC, Arcade, Xbox World magazines plus more. Tim goes into detail about the challenges he had on certain magazines over the years also before needing a new challenge as a full-time author.
We do discuss his novels as well as his podcast "Missing" from a few years ago.
We hope you enjoy the interview and thanks to Tim for his time.
In this episode Paul sits down to discuss CVG magazine and more with Paul Glancey and also another Paul, this time Davies! Yes three people on one call all called Paul (that's a mouthful).
Paul Glancey makes his MPU debut to take us through some key moments of his career. Starting on Zzap64, working with Jaz Rignall he soon got into the swing of things and followed Jaz to EMAP and CVG magazine. He tells us about learning the ropes, a few fave games as well as working on Megatech, Mean Machines and more.
Paul Davies returns to the show to speak more in depth about his time on Nintendo Magazine System and CVG. It was great to hear both Paul's share their experiences and crossed paths at EMAP.
We hope you enjoy the show and thanks to PG and PD for their time.
Chris Scullion joins us this episode to discuss his career as a games writer. Starting on Official Nintendo Magazine in 2006, he has also written for the online versions of N Gamer and CVG as well as being a regular contributor to Nintendo Life.
When he joined ONM the Gamecube was on the way out but the Wii would go on to become one of Nintendo's most popular consoles. We discuss some key moments in his career, meeting some well known names, certain games reviews for Sonic titles and much more.
Chris shares some honest thoughts in our conversation especially how CVG ended! Finally we also discuss his work on the NES and SNES Encyclopedias and his future plans for follow up books.
We hope you enjoy the interview and thanks to Chris for his time.
In this episode Paul interviews Paul McNally about his career in videogames journalism and much more.
Paul started his career on ST Action under the guidance of previous guest Nick Clarkson. Working up-to editor he stayed there until the magazine began to wind down in a challenging market for the ST.
Staying at Europress publishing he also worked on Mega Action, Bad Influence (both the mag and show) before the company was bought by IDG Media.
We discuss some mags for the first time with a guest such as Playstation Pro (and it's laddish covers), GamePro UK and others. Paul shares some great stories about games events with the guys from Loaded magazine, an unplanned trip to Mexico and much more!
This interview has a lot so we hope you enjoy it.
This episode we revisit the "listener choice" format, previously used on our Dreamcast, Game Boy and Commodore 64 shows. Back before the world went mad, we asked our listeners to share their five favourite SEGA Mega Drive games with us, which we then got Paul to count up and combine to create a Top 10 of the most popular ones.
Join Chris Smith v2 and Tom Charnock as they tackle the listeners top 10 Mega Drive games, and try to find new things to say about a list that holds few surprises. They mostly seem to manage this by just going wildly off-topic. Enjoy!
Do get in touch on the usual channels to say hello or to give us any feedback. If you enjoy our work, it would be great if you could drop us a review on iTunes, they really do help us get the show out there.
In this episode we celebrate 100 episodes of Maximum Power Up. Since the show started in 2015 we have covered a mixture of modern and retrogaming.
Most of the team share their experiences of making the podcast, fave episodes, games played etc. Even though it does take a lot of work we are very happy to have great listeners that have helped the show grow.
It has been brilliant to have had the chance to have on so many guests from the games industry and many well known games magazines. Hearing their stories has always been a highlight. We have become well known as the podcast for lovers of games magazines and there are more interviews to come.
We hope you enjoy the episode and here is to many more.
In this bonus episode we have two guests, Frank Gasking and Sam Dyer. Frank runs the excellent and informative website Games That Weren't for the last 20 years.
Sam is known for his excellent work over at Bitmap Books.
Games That Weren't features many games that were due to be released but for various reasons didn't happen. Frank has spent years speaking to the people that worked on these games and systems and is now taking it to the next level.
Working with Sam at Bitmap Books, Games That Weren't is coming out as a book. At over 600 pages it covers over 80 games from 1975-2015 it covers unreleased titles for arcade, home computers, consoles and more.
We discuss a few things that you can expect to see in the book and why you should preorder it for the release this August.
Follow the link here
https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-games-that-werent
In this episode we are very happy to have Dominik Diamond on the show.
For many gamers in the 90's he was the face of gaming on television as the host of GamesMaster. The show covered so many amazing challenges, features and more. We discuss some of Dominik's favourite memories of the show, guests that were on, commentators and more.
We also talk about his other games television show from the mid 00's, "When Games Attack", gaming in general and even discuss his love for Glasgow Celtic Football Club.
We hope you enjoy the show and do check out Dominik's Twitch show Mon-Fri 5pm UK time.
The Maximum Power up team for another special bonus episode as Lockdown 2020 continues.
In this new Pandemic Pod, the team discuss the two "big hitters" Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Streets of Rage 4, and also share what else they've been up to.
As ever, if you like the episode or have any feedback, we'd love it if you'd hit us up on the socials and leave reviews. However, self-care is more important. Look after yourselves and each other first. We'll be okay.