LSG 013: Frank Lima talks programming on the Commodore 64 to programming on the Sega Dreamcast, getting the Master Sword in Ocarina of Time, and growing BeachCon from a LAN party to a full blown video game convention

Load Save Game

Welcome to Episode 13 of Load Save Game, a podcast where I talk to people about their personal journey with video games. I am your host Jose Eusebio. It’s been one year since we first launched the podcast! Thank you for listening for the past year. I’ve gotten so much lovely feedback from people telling me how much they love the show, how it brings up a lot of nostalgic memories of growing up with video games and also learning about games that they would love to try out and that makes me so happy to hear. I love hearing and sharing people’s journeys with video games and how this amazing medium and artform has shaped our lives and I’m glad to be able to share that same joy with both my guests and listeners too.
Speaking of guests, my spectacular guest this episode is Frank Lima. You know that scene in the first Iron Man movie where Jeff Bridge’s character is like, ‘TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!” I’m confident that Frank could build an Iron Man suit with a box of scraps. Frank is an animator, a filmmaker, a writer, a game designer, a software developer, a 3D modeler, an illustrator, a roboticist, a special effects artist, an archived video restorer, among many other things. He’s worked for Legacy Studios, Dreamworks, JPL which is pretty much NASA. Frank is one of the smartest people I know and on top of that he’s a huge lover of video games so I was super excited to have him on the show.
In the episode we talk about a ton of great stuff. Frank tells us about Tahi which was his independent video game project he was working on in college where his team developed an entirely new video game engine for the Sega Dreamcast as part of their senior thesis project. We talk about one of his favorite and most influential games, Star Control 2 which is a Sci-Fi action game from 1992 that helped to inspire the Mass Effect series, and BeachCon, his college dorm LAN party that grew from being a few dozen people to a full-size video game convention attended by tens of thousands of people.
Follow Frank on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wizards.foundry/
Darknet Diaries Xecutor episode: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/136/
Make sure to subscribe and review Load Save Game on your podcast listener of choice. Follow us on socials we’re @loadsavegame on most platforms. If you have any thoughts or questions about the show feel free to email us at [email protected]! I hope you enjoy the episode!
Thank you to Shaun Panado for the use of our theme song "One Shot One Kill Kestrel" off of the album Kind of a Big Deal Vol. 2. You can find his music and projects at his Linktree: https://linktr.ee/shonix
Show Art by: Jordan Maeve https://www.instagram.com/thejollity/
Make sure to subscribe and review Load Save Game on your podcast listener of choice. Follow us on socials we’re @loadsavegame on most platforms. If you have any thoughts or questions about the show feel free to email us at [email protected]! We’ll see you next time!