Lost Joystick Network

Lost Joystick Network started in the summer of 2020 and came out of our love for the video games that we played growing up. The original intent of the show was to do a comprehensive overview of a single retro video game and to bring together like-minded people within the retro video game community. The range of the games reviewed spans from the Atari 2600 up to the PlayStation 2 era.

We wanted to learn more about the video games that had an impact on us in our youth, talk about their development, find out what influenced the people involved, and dig into the urban legends associated with them. The ultimate outcome of the show is to drive us to play a game from our youth that impacted us, good or bad, discuss our opinions of it growing up, and see how those opinions may have shifted over the years.

The hosts are two Flint natives and musical veterans of the Flint music scene: Jay Hale and Michael Pitts. Mike has been with the show since the inception. Jay came on as the full-time co-host in April of 2021. The show is live-streamed and recorded every other Wednesday at Red Ink Flint, above the Local 432. Fun fact: Two other Flint natives, Jerry Crago and Johnny Mason, helped to start the show before Jay assumed the role full-time. Johnny designed the logo, which is an homage to LJN, a notorious publisher for the NES.

We also have two recurring guests with their own segment each episode where they provide their thoughts on the game. They are Robby Komen and John Young. Robby is based in Chicago, while John is currently in Kansas City, MO. They can be found on Instagram:

Robby Komen - @8bitsupremacy
John Young - @retrogameenthusiast

The livestream is broadcast on Twitch and YouTube. OId streams can be found on our YouTube channel. The podcast itself is edited and can be found on your aggregator of choice, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.

See episodes and connect with the Network here!