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Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social
4.9K followers 758 following 143 posts

I write stories about the games industry. Formerly at 1UP and Polygon. Now working on @designroom.site.

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Reposted by Matt Leone
Design Room @designroom.site · 05/10/2026
Big new story! The best 8,000 words you'll read on Vib-Ribbon today.
designroom.site
Vib-Ribbon: An oral history
Almost 27 years later, we round up the team behind NanaOn-Sha's procedurally generated playground to look at the legacy of PlayStation's wireframe rabbit.
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Wes Fenlon @wes.readonlymemo.com · 06/10/2026
Finally got to the bottom of the 27-year-old mystery that's been HAUNTING the videogame industry since its discovery
pcgamer.com
The PC Gamer Mysteries, Case #1: "A Slice of Death": Why is there a dead golfer hidden in Golden Tee '99?
This murder's gone decades without being solved... until now.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Seems like a good day to ring this bell.
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Design Room @designroom.site · 31/07/2026
Hi, we're a new video game oral histories site. Want to read the story of Shadow of the Colossus, as told by 11 people who worked on it? Or hear what Will Wright has to say about Spore in retrospect? Or see previously unreleased footage of Nintendo's Sound Fantasy? Check us out at designroom.site
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Design Room @designroom.site · 15/05/2026
Namco's exercise bike-powered flying contraption is almost 30 years old, so we tracked down the game's director to look back.
designroom.site
How Namco built 1996's best arcade cabinet
We talk with the director of the bike-powered Prop Cycle about how the game came about, its international success, and sidelined sequel plans.
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shmuplations.com @shmuplations.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Learn about the making of Samurai Shodown and life at SNK in the "arcade action" era of the late 80s in this massive interview with alumni Yasushi Adachi and Tomoaki Fukui! shmuplations.com/samuraispiri...
shmuplations.com
The Samurai Craftsmen of SNK - shmuplations.com
This massive interview with SNK alumni Yasushi Adachi and Tomoaki Fukui originally appeared in the SNK Anniversary Fan Book.
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Design Room @designroom.site · 09/09/2026
We're open for freelance pitches! Have any ideas for oral histories, roundtables, Q&As, or other stories that feel in line with what we've published so far? Feel free to DM. Rates typically range from $250-$750.
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Design Room @designroom.site · 22/07/2026
For our latest big story, @duncanfyfe.net dives deep the bestselling pinball game of all-time, The Addams Family.
designroom.site
The Addams Family pinball: An oral history
We talk to the team behind the 1992 breakout hit to learn about licensing, magnets, and how it designed the most popular pinball game of all-time.
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Nicole Carpenter @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
i wrote about pokemon cards for teen vogue!!! a big, 5,000 word story about how we got to this point, and how the community has changed (and stuck together!) through it all www.teenvogue.com/story/pokemo...
teenvogue.com
Pokémon Cards Became a Billion-Dollar Industry. Then Came the Armed Robberies
How an innocent hobby became a target of armed robbery, break-ins, and six-figure heists.
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Lost In Cult @lostincult.co.uk · 15/09/2026
Over 40 years of cutting edge cinema. Introducing our (Post)[Culture] premiere, Archive: Shinya Tsukamoto 🎞️ 400 pages. Limited extras. Signed by Tsukamoto himself. Only 500 signed copies available! 🔗🔻
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bl⚰️ke @metallicaisrad.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I've spent the last 2 years working on this: (Post)[Culture] @lostincult.co.uk's new pop culture imprint. And I couldn't be more excited to announce our first project: ARCHIVE: Shinya Tsukamoto, a collaboration with, well, Shinya Tsukamoto. I've never been more proud of anything I've ever done.
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Read-Only Memory @readonlymemory.com · 15/09/2026
Forty-eight new pages have joined the party. The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Ultimate Works expands the original Collected Works with newly discovered artwork, design documents and material from Sega’s 16-bit era. Available in two editions on readonlymemory.com
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Reposted by Matt Leone
Design Room @designroom.site · 11/09/2026
Since we published our Spore oral history in June, we've been talking to members of the mod community about how they've kept the game going for the past 18 years.
designroom.site
The modding community keeping Spore alive
We talk to three members of the Spore modding community about their efforts to continue Maxis' work and keep the game active for new generations of fans.
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Lewis Gordon @lewisgordon.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Capcom is on a generational run. But this is no renaissance: the company has never been greater. I reported on the secret of its success, from "Crapcom" in the early 2010s to its one-banger-after-another present, speaking to many of its most illustrious producers. www.theringer.com/2026/09/03/v...
theringer.com
How Capcom Cracked the Code of Game Development
The video game industry is in turmoil, but 2026 could be Capcom’s career year. How does the company behind ‘Resident Evil Requiem,’ ‘Pragmata,’ and ‘Onimusha: Way of the Sword’ keep pumping out hits?
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Love the header art.
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Reposted by Matt Leone
Design Room @designroom.site · 26/08/2026
Almost 20 years after Sam & Max Season One's release, six Telltale team members look back on the time they made a group of Secret Service agents dance the can-can.
designroom.site
Sam & Max's War Song: An oral history, 20 years later
Six former Telltale Games team members look back on the time they made a group of Secret Service agents dance the can-can.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Can't recall specifically, sorry.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
And @jparish.bsky.social!
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I think about this a lot.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The thing I always come back to when I think about this, though, is we ended up doing a five-page preview of the game that issue instead, and we ended up doing four pages of reviews the next issue. So Konami ended up getting more coverage than it would have otherwise.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I remember calling @milkman.bsky.social and talking through this, and we ultimately decided to punt the review. We got to feel good about ourselves, and we even threw a little stink about it in the magazine.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
(I think I recall hearing later than the NDA wasn't universal and some other outlets or territories weren't asked to agree to the same conditions, so I'm still not clear on whether we just got the wrong forms.)
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
That seemed like something that should be in a preview agreement rather than a review one, so I flagged it, but it was apparently what they wanted.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Reading through the agreement, I noticed that it said we couldn't mention anything after a certain point. I forget the exact cutoff, but it was early in the game, after the first chapter or something.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This was a little awkward on its own, because we'd already played a bunch of the game and they should have sent these out before we got in the building, but sometimes things were more casual back then.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
We were there for a few days, I think, and at some point along the way Konami's PR team handed out NDAs for us to sign.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I was reviewing it for EGM, and a group of us flew down to Konami's office near LAX. I remember the hotel we stayed at down the street. They had nice cookies at check in.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
All this MGS4 talk is bringing back memories of reviewing it at Konami while being handed an NDA saying we couldn't talk about most of the game...
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Duncan Fyfe @duncanfyfe.net · 25/08/2026
I'm in ESSES again, with a piece on the strangest Formula 1 video game ever made - or not made, as the case may be. This is a career highlight; never before have I reported a story by enlisting a F1 driver to ask another F1 driver about Austrian hackers *during the Monaco Grand Prix*
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Syncoplay Retro Gaming @syncoplay.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Beyond the NES is ready to share with the world!!! --Coming August 18th to Kickstarter-- www.kickstarter.com/projects/syn...
kickstarter.com
Coming soon: Beyond the NES: Rediscovering 8-bit on the Japanese Famicom
Discover the 8-bit games you missed. A curated, 300+ page collector's guide to the Japanese Famicom library.
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Jack Yarwood @jackgyarwood.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
With Galactic Racer on the way, I gathered the creative leads of Star Wars Episode 1: Racer together for an in-depth roundtable-style chat on the original Star Wars racing game.
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Samit Sarkar @samitsarkar.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I forgot to share this when it went live last week, but that's okay, because it's a great weekend read! I really enjoyed copy editing this piece. I've definitely played The Addams Family before, but I didn't realize how much of a phenomenon it was. Great quotes in here, as always!
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Reposted by Matt Leone
Simogo @simogo.com · 24/07/2026
Design Room: very good. Addams Family pinball: very good.
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Design Room @designroom.site · 23/07/2026
Following yesterday's Addams Family oral history, we have a story on how pinball licensing exploded in the '90s.
designroom.site
How licensing changed the pinball industry
Roger Sharpe, Ken Fedesna, Pat Lawlor, and others discuss how licensed games took over pinball around the time that The Addams Family released.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
And yes, I tried calling the WMS Pinball Hotline. Sadly, no longer in service.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
This story gave me the perfect excuse to stop by a few arcades and take a bunch of photos.
A photo of The Addams Family pinball at Pacific Pinball MuseumA photo of The Addams Family pinball at Musee MecaniqueA photo of The Addams Family pinball at Free Gold Watch
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
One of my favorite stories on the site to date!
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Jason Schreier @jasonschreier.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Valve's new Steam Machine was 14 years (and one big failure) in the making. Here's the twisty story behind the Steam maker's decade-long quest to bring PCs to the living room: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
bloomberg.com
Valve’s 14-Year Journey to Make the Steam Machine
The company first began laying the groundwork for this year’s hardware way back in 2012
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shmuplations.com @shmuplations.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Very happy to see everyone enjoying the new Eno/Miyamoto interview! If you'd like to support our work at shmuplations, and vote on our upcoming translations (many more Eno pieces await), please consider joining our patreon! www.patreon.com/shmuplations...
patreon.com
July/August/September voting thread! | shmuplations.com
July/August/September voting thread! by shmuplations.com on Patreon. Join shmuplations.com's community for exclusive content and updates.
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shmuplations.com @shmuplations.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Today we have something special: a newly translated interview from July 1996 between Shigeru Miyamoto and Kenji Eno! Conducted just weeks after the launch of Mario 64, Eno takes Miyamoto to task (in a friendly way) with several fascinating critiques of its design. shmuplations.com/miyamotoxeno/
shmuplations.com
Shigeru Miyamoto x Kenji Eno (1996) - shmuplations.com
In July 1996, Kenji Eno visited Nintendo HQ to speak with Shigeru Miyamoto as the first of his "cross-talk" series.
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Chris Plante @plante.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Post Games is an NPR-style weekly podcast about video game culture. This episode is a tasting menu for newcomers. Hear about... The future of Nintendo! Growing old as a gaming YouTuber! How Silicon Valley metrics infected our games! A Dragon Quest monologue from Tim Rogers!
postgame.substack.com
A Gaming Podcast Your Friends Will Love
A video game podcast for listeners who want something different
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Design Room @designroom.site · 10/07/2026
Inscryption is almost 5, so let's talk about its music.
designroom.site
Breaking down the influences behind Inscryption's music
Almost five years after the game's release, we talk to creator Daniel Mullins and composer and sound designer Jonah Senzel about Inscryption's standout audio.
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A Profound Waste of Time @apwot.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
📣 Happy to say that Pre-Orders for Issue 6 are NOW LIVE! 📣 Go reserve your copy now! 👇👇👇 shop.apwot.com
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Design Room @designroom.site · 11/06/2026
We've got a big one today. Almost 20 years after Maxis released Spore, we talked to eight people -- including Will Wright -- about the studio's big experiment.
designroom.site
Spore: An oral history
A wild bet in development for the better part of a decade, Spore reached for the stars — and, at times, got there. We recently spoke to eight team members, including chief designer Will Wright, to loo...
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Perfect weekend reading.
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Design Room @designroom.site · 11/06/2026
We also have a couple of Spore bonus stories today for paid subscribers, like this one on the game's Wind Waker connection.
designroom.site
The Wind Waker 'obsession' that influenced Spore
One of Spore's early influences came from an unexpected place: Nintendo's "toon-shaded" GameCube game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Perhaps the most justified pun in publishing history.
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James Mielke @milkman.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I can finally reveal the cover for Nobuo Uematsu: On The Record, coming from @viz.com this September, which is not far away. Cover portrait of Uematsu by Yoshitaka Amano, foreword written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, testimonials from awesome guest stars, and tons of surprises! Preorder: amzn.to/4g6Y9ai
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