The panel reviews Cookie’s Bustle, a Japanese PC adventure game hindered by endless copyright strikes and finally freed by the Video Game History Foundation.

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SHOW NOTES:

1: How did we get here? (05:53)

2: How hard is it to get this Japanese abandonware game from 1999 running on your PC in 2026? (11:38)

3: What is happening in Cookie’s Bustle and what are you doing in it? (18:18)

4: Apart from financial cost, what are the material advantages of keeping a development team small? (36:43)

5: Chopemon asks: If you were to go on an adventure, what items have video games taught you to take that you wouldn’t normally think to take? (43:26)

6: Developer Keisuke Harigai once said in a 2001 interview that he designed Cookie’s Bustle with the European market in mind. What do you think that means? (49:51)

7: Do you like Cookie’s Bustle? (56:07)

8: Let’s talk about the mystique of inaccessible games (01:04:24)

LIGHTNING ROUND: Recommendations (01:15:56)

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Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Ash Parrish, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn. Original Music by Kurt Feldman.