Episode: 1403
Title: HPR1403: hiro from GamingGrannar at Retrospelsmässan
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1403/hpr1403.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:53:04

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Today, on Hacker Public Radio, we will talk about old games and interview an expert from
Sweden.
In 2012, the Swedish gaming community level 7 voted for the blog Gaming Granar to become
gaming blog of the year.
Gaming Granar, or the gaming neighbors, consists of David Dave Boström, Emily Ecken Karlsson
and Andreas Hiro Karlsson.
Dave won the Swedish Championship in Nintendo in 2003 and has a great Metroid collection.
Ecken is an accomplished gamer, creates edible game cakes, and also has a newly started
collection of games with pink cartridges.
Hiro can be recognised by his retro game inspired tattoos, and is known for his love for series
like Mega Man X and Castlevania.
Together, the three neighbors release a video blog about everything and anything gaming related,
but often with a focus on older games.
Hiro and I met at Retrospael's Mesa in 2013.
This retro game convention is on its fourth year and has grown considerably during those years.
Now in the second largest exhibition hall in Gothenburg, with roughly 2,000 visitors,
and a 3 hour queue to get in.
Yeah, 3 hours.
But it was worth it, I really enjoyed it.
There are competitions in old games, you can buy retro games and consoles,
there's cosplay competitions and so on and so forth.
One of the organisers, Marcus Sverlander, said that Retrospael's Mesa is a yearly event with
focus on consoles and computers that was released before the year 2000.
So it was not strange to find Hiro here.
Let's listen to what he has to say about the good things in life.
My name is Andreas Carlson, also known as Hiro here in Sweden.
I'm a video game blogger or video blogger, more or less.
I'm one of the three gaming granders, which in English means something like gaming neighbors.
We are three people that my sister, her boyfriend and me, we are gaming a lot and we are neighbors.
So therefore the bog is named gaming neighbors.
Wonderful.
And what are you doing here today?
We're here for the blog, where we'll of course take some video clips, show people that can come
to these sort of things.
What can you do here?
Talking to the people that sell stuff.
There are a lot of cabinets full with matroid items you've never seen before in your entire life.
There are competitions in Super Mario Kart.
Every year they have like the unofficial Super Mario Brothers, Swedish master ships.
So yeah, it's like a really big thing for Swedish nerd gamers to be here.
Wonderful. And did you have anything special in mind when you came here today?
Oh well, there's always a little part of me that wants to shop something extra cool,
something extra that didn't count on getting when I got there.
But talking to all the people, we have a lot of followers on our YouTube channel,
on our blog. It's fantastic to talk to those guys and girls.
We have a guy in a wheelchair and he just wanted to talk to us, saying like I watch you guys
every day, you make my life easier. So it's just fantastic to talk to that guy and then
take some pictures with him. And you're not only known from gaming, Grana, but also
Spell classic music, also in English, something like gaming classic music.
It's one of Sweden's only podcasts for video game music. So I'm one of the two hosts there.
And how long have you been going? Spell classic music. We're about 187 episodes right now,
once a week for like four years or something. I entered the show in episode 70 or something.
So to be I say he was alone until I got there. That's quite impressive. Yeah, yeah, now this
autumn it's going to be like the 200th episode and we really have to think can we go on for 100 more
because we have like an unwritten rule. Don't play the same song twice. And we have about 10 songs
per episode. Plus when people write us and play this song when you have a castaway near a special
or something like that. So we have played like two and a half thousand songs. So it's a little
hard to find new, unique, fantastic tunes now. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, something like that.
And gaming, Grana has been going on for how long? Three years. We actually just a couple of
months ago. We celebrated three years. And this year, every spring there is the Swedish people and
the Swedish, like the coming people in gaming. They vote on what blog, what gaming site, what
magazine, etc. It's are the best. And this year we actually won the gaming neighbors.
And that's for 2012. Yeah, yeah. So what we do, we release a video once a week. And I think that's why
people like us. That's why we do something different. We do our thing. Everyone can more or less
start a blog and write, I like this game. It's a good game. Go buy it. But we actually, we have done
everything from baking Kirby cupcakes to make a Street Fighter workout video. So you can get your
stomach in. And yeah, we're sitting things like this. One episode I remember particularly was when
you and day was sitting by some former water in the summertime, just recording whatever you thought
would happen in the coming year. You don't remember that episode? Yeah, I don't remember it. We
actually have red and green converse shoes assembling tomorrow on Luigi, though, of course.
And we talked about, we walked past some some bugs and stuff and we started talking about
Pokemon. And then we just said about water and we shared our Mega Man X speedrun hints and
the air in us. But that's your thing. You're very casual. It's easy. It's nothing
particularly well. It doesn't feel rehearsed. It feels natural. Yeah, we don't. Of course, we
have an idea how the video is supposed to be. But when we start shooting, we don't have, we say
stuff as they come. And therefore we might make some mistakes in when the games are released,
etc. And who did that game? But it's all part of the gaming neighbors community.
Yeah, and you have a community that are readily happy to correct you with you.
Yeah, I'm not offended, but that's great. And what kind of equipment do you use?
We have the video cameras, like 12,000 Swedish grounds, that's like $2,000. Something like that.
Our microphone, when we walk around, it's your iPhone microphone with a free recorder
program or something. So it's not expensive stuff. The camera is very important. So that we
actually got HD quality and stuff like that. In the beginning, we had a small camera, just a random
$400 camera or something like that. And as we got HD quality, the views got up and everything got
better. Dave, one of the three members, he's the one doing all editing. And he does everything in
premier elements, something like that. And he have learned everything by himself. So that's why
the videos sometimes aren't that good. But we were getting better every week.
And you're not neighbors anymore? No, actually, they moved a bigger apartment. David, he's got like
2,000, 2,500 games. So he needed a room just for games. But it takes five minutes to go through.
It's not, I can almost see their house from my balcony. Close enough so you don't have to change
the name of it. No, no, no, no, no. And what is it with retro games in particular that catches
your fancy? Why isn't something else? First and foremost, I think it's childhood memories.
I played Mega Man X and Super Castlevania for a lot. And today I got Castlevania tattooed on my
arm here. And I got the Mega Man collection of, like, A, the games. So a lot of childhood memories.
And now when I work, I got on my own economy. I can actually buy those games. I didn't
afford as a child. I know this particular Super Nintendo game. Hey, punk, are you tough enough?
It's like a really, really bad Street Fighter game. I so wanted this because I read in the
magazine as a child. Oh, my God. I got to have this game. Maybe seven years ago, I bought it.
I played it for 15 minutes. And it's like, oh, this is bad. This is really bad. But now I got it.
As part of my child is complete. And I play a lot of new games as well. But there's something special
about the retro stage. Wonderful. And so that's where you recommend people to start with the local
geek gatherings and with the things that they remember from their childhood.
Yeah, like if you had a Super Nintendo when you were a child, buy it. If you only pay like
Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 today, but you remember those good old days with Super Mario World and
Super Metroid by one. If you don't like it, then you will get the same amount of money back
because retro is, it's a good money today. You will not make a bad deal in a retro game, more or less.
But you're not interested in remakes and retro and stuff that makes it possible to play old games
on new consoles and such solutions. Some of them are good. I've been checking out those
power packs. Have you seen those for the NES and the Super Nintendo? It's like a home-brewed
cartage that you can place a SD card with the ROMs in. So you can actually play on the Super Nintendo,
on a TV with the Super Nintendo controller, but you don't have to actually use the real cartages.
No, right. So in a collector point of view, that's a good thing. They don't have to...
So the cassette, the original cassette, it stands in the bookshelf, nice, tidy, you don't touch it
at all. Right, understand that. So what would you like to plug them at the end of this interview?
What would you like people to visit? Do I have a look at? It might be a problem when the most
of the stuff you do is in Swedish, but perhaps something could entice even an English-speaking audience.
These gatherings, I'm pretty sure they are all over the world. So if you maybe live in England
and you see that, oh, it's 20 miles from here, go there. You have nothing to lose, except maybe
a free day of work, or something like that. But get together with other nerds. You'll love it.
I only got nerd friends these days. All right, splendid. Any last words?
Gamer, I'm fun. That's what it might fall about.
Spend it. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you.
The date for the 2014 edition of Retro Space Messon is already set. Saturday the 3rd of May
in Irikspice, Holland, Gothenburg. In the show notes, you will find links to the Retro Space Messon
Convention, the Gaming Granada Video Blog, the Spielklassiker Musik Retro Music Podcast,
and the other stuff that was mentioned in the interview. The podcast that he re-hosts
together with Tobias Jensen, a NES and Amiga 500 gamer who wished he had more time for games,
hit the 200th episode in November 2013. Now let us end this episode of HPR with Hero's
Life Advice. Game and have fun. It's a CT signing off.
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