Retro Dodo: Hi, everybody. Today I'm chatting with Maggie Brennan, a person you may have seen online as Retro Maggie, alongside the amazing content she's been creating, including clips with some very famous skaters, which I'm going to get onto a little bit further on in this interview. Maggie, how are you doing today?
Maggie: Good, thanks! How are you doing?
Retro Dodo: I'm very good, thank you. I'm very good. I've been following your stuff online for a while because you've got an incredible, incredible gaming collection. I see your videos and I just look at the room you've created with all the games in the background and you seem to just have like a treasure trove of nostalgia kicking around in there. When did you start collecting all this stuff?
Maggie: I started as a kid collecting all this stuff. I've had it hidden away because I've got a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. So I had all this stuff hidden away for a long time, and it was only the last couple of years that I thought I might start displaying this stuff in the lounge room. I thought maybe let's turn it into a gaming lounge room. The kids are starting to get into it now, and they also respect the games. They know to keep them nice in the box and not throw them about. So I'm like, all right, we'll get some shelving. Let's get all the retro games out, and then yeah, we just started collecting again. It's been pretty fun. The kids are enjoying it as well, too.
Retro Dodo: So, are some of the games that you've got ones that you've had from a child? Have you been recollecting everything that you used to play? Are there some originals from, you know, back in the day up there in the collection as well?
Maggie: Yeah, well, mostly PlayStation 1 games I've sort of kept from a child, but I was spewing because I sold my Nintendo 64 and got rid of all the games on that. So I started recollecting my Nintendo 64 games about 13 or 14 years ago when they weren't really that expensive. So I got about 120 or 130 boxed Nintendo 64 games and I wanted to try and collect the whole set but lately, the prices of them are just too crazy. So I might switch to just getting the cartridges from now on. But I don't know if my OCD could deal with having half the set boxed and half the set cartridges. So I might just have to buy one every couple of months or something.
Juggling Careers & Content Creation
Maggie: Yeah, well, lately, ever since I started getting into the retro creating, the retro channel, I've sort of changed what I want to tattoo nowadays. I want to tattoo that 90s stuff. The most recent tattoos I've done are a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 tattoo I did on one of my friends, 'Wayne's Games,' who's another content creator. I did a Limp Bizkit tattoo, Korn tattoos, and Slipknot tattoos too. As I've started doing my Retro channels, I've started sort of being a bit more picky with the tattoos that I want to do now, which I can as I've been tattooing for 13 or 14 years now. I'm loving the mixture of having a retro channel and being able to do the retro tattoos as well, too. I've been able to enjoy it a lot. It has been really hard, so over the last year the channel has really picked up, and I put in a lot of work for it
Maggie: I would go to work, you know, 10 till 2.30, pick the kids up from school, sort the kids out, and stuff like that. Spend time with the family, and spend time with the husband. Then from nine o'clock till about 12 o'clock, I do all my content creating and then go to bed, and do it all again. Ever since about September, October, I've just been just doing that for the whole time. Sometimes, if I've got the day off, I'll just do content creating all day, making videos, but I really enjoy it, and I really enjoy playing the games and talking to people about it. So as much as it's been a bit stressful sometimes, yeah, I've been having fun with it.
Retro Dodo: So, when you were playing games back as a child or as a teenager, did you find that the artwork and the characters from your favorite games influenced your creative skills when you were learning to draw and get into artwork that way?
Maggie: Yeah. 100%. Oh, it's funny. Street skaters were the first sort of skateboarding games I had. And I think it was Street Skater One or Street Skater Two when the characters came on the screen, I remember sitting at home in my beanbag–I still have a beanbag to this day– and trying to draw the characters in a little notebook and colour them in the same sort of style. So I tried to copy an album, a CD cover art, or some of the characters in little books. I wish I had kept those books, but I used to love drawing the art from them. Grand Theft Auto art is some of my favourite art as well too.
Retro Dodo: Yeah, I've seen you drawing some Grand Theft Auto artwork recently on your Instagram, right?
Maggie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do some PlayStation 5 covers. I've been painting a couple of PlayStation 5 covers as well too, just for a bit of fun or a bit of content creation. Time Lapses as well. I did some Blink 182 covers, a set of Korn covers as well, and donated the proceeds from the sale of that to the Royal Children's Hospital. This legend, Rob from the US, ended up buying the covers on eBay. And he ended up spending 2,200 bucks on them. All the proceeds went to the Royal Children's Hospital, and he's got the covers now.
Maggie: My daughter had to go to the Royal Children's Hospital, nothing serious. I've had some friends' kids go there who have had cancer as well, and it's a really great hospital in Australia. It's meant to be one of the best children's hospitals in the world, so it's just something that I've always wanted to do, was to donate to them. My mum passed away of cancer as well too so I've always thought that this was something that my mum would be proud of me for doing
Extreme Sports Games & Interviewing The Tony Hawks Skaters
Retro Dodo: Let's talk about extreme sports games. When it comes to sports games, Tony Hawk's is obviously one of your main loves. When did that first begin?
Maggie: It would have been when the games came out, and it's funny because I loved skateboarding so much back in the day, but I would never skateboard in the street because I would get made fun of for it for being a girl. Back then, being a girl and skateboarding meant I'd be made fun of, so I'd be skateboarding in the back of my house. We had probably a little three-meter by three-meter, a little bit of concrete, and I'd be skateboarding there, trying to skateboard at least. I'm still not good at it to this day, but I still loved it.
Maggie: And then I got Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and Alyssa Steamer on it, the first female skater in a game. And it just changed everything for me. I got the balls to go out the front and start skateboarding after that. And yeah, it was just the best thing ever. Playing that game sort of got my skateboarding fix as well. And I just fell in love with it, fell in love with the music. And yeah, me and my neighbour would be playing Tony Hawk's, then we'd grab the skateboards, go out the front for a bit, then go back inside, play some Tony Hawk's.
Retro Dodo: So when you found yourself in a room with Bam Margera, Tony Hawk, and all the people from the games you've been playing through your childhood, I imagine you went in quite cool and collected and just incredibly calm, and everything went really well, right? That's kind of the vibe I'm getting from how that interview might have gone.
Maggie: No, no, I was, it was funny because it was a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Fest. It was full of press and content creators, and only a couple of Tony Hawk's fan content creators like myself. Jamie Thomas is standing right there, and everyone's just around him and not looking at him. And I just like waving. Then there's Bam standing to the side with his missus. You got all these pro skaters around Leo Thomas and everything and, and no one's sort of taking it in really. And I'm just going up to him, waving, talking to him and stuff. And they were just so nice. They were so chill.
Maggie: And I just didn't think that I was going to get a chance to talk to everyone. I was told that I'd be going there. And if I want to have a chat to people, I can. And the dude from Activision said, if you want to have a chat to Steve Caballero, go up to the red carpet bit. And so I did, had a chat to him. And then the other guys just started coming by. So I just was like, I'm just going have a chat to them. We're to have a chat to them too. And he's like, do whatever you want.
Maggie: So I just started having a chat to everyone and I was just like, I was just like an over-excited fan. I couldn't control my yeah, yeah. So I just wish I didn't talk over them so much, but I think they appreciate it at the end of day as well too, because they're talking to all these people that are professionals, and then they come to me at the end and I'm just so excited talking to them. And they knew I was a fan of the game. And I think that made them feel pretty good as well too. So still excited now thinking about it.
Retro Dodo: I think your excitement is infectious when you watch it. You can see Bam smiling because he's thinking, 'I'm talking to somebody who also loves this as much as I do.' You're asking about your favorite level. Most people are gonna be talking about 'Why have you been gone for so long? What's it like to come back and do this?' But you're just straight in there with 'What's your favorite level? What's next? How excited are you to be back in the game?' And I feel like it is refreshing. It's a very wholesome video. But how did this come about? How did this happen? How did you suddenly find yourself doing a channel for a year and then interviewing Bam Margera and hanging out with Steve Caballero and looking out for Rodney Mullen?
Maggie: I couldn't believe it. So it was about six weeks ago at the time of this interview. I had a message on my Instagram, and they were like, 'We're with Activision Blizzard, they just want to know if you'd be interested in working with them.' And I was like, 'Hmm, this sounds a bit like a scam, but that sounds like a really good scam!' They said 'Do you want to come to the Tony Hawk's Fest and try out Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3-4?' And I was like, 'Of course, yeah!' So they sent me over there. I wasn't sure if it was real at the start or if someone just wanted my kidneys or something like that, but I was willing to take the chance and go over there. They paid for flights, accommodation, and everything like that. And I got to trial out the game.
Maggie: And they said, 'Give your honest opinion on it as well.' But of course I loved it. And yeah, it was a good, it was a good game. I think I'm the only one in the world who wanted the two-minute timer on it as well. I loved the arcade mode with the timer in THPS 1-3. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, it's more the career mode, which I kind of lost a little bit of interest in. I like the excitement of the two-minute timer and trying to get as many goals done as you can, and then you don't do it, and you restart again. But in saying that, when I did play 3 and 4 with the two-minute timer it was good. But it did feel like the levels went a little bit too quickly.
The Return To Cardboard Boxes
Retro Dodo: I do wish we'd go back to cardboard again. I think it'd be incredible to have the cardboard box for the Nintendo Switch 2 games to get away from the, you know, to have like this again with all the writing on the back and then the instruction book.
Maggie: You're gonna love this. I actually made some cardboard boxes up just for content creation. So Mario Kart - I just made these ones up, I love it. I wish that the Nintendo Switch sort of started doing this sort of stuff again. I just thought I'd do that to trick people online. Because I chucked a photo of this up before saying 'I'm going live playing Mario Kart later on,' just to see if anyone picks up on the Nintendo 64 box.
Retro Dodo: They are incredible. You should make those and sell them on Etsy so people can just like take them take them straight out of the plastic case, straight into the cardboard one for ultimate nostalgia
Maggie: I'd love it. Even if they made them like a mini version, I want cardboard boxes back again. I think, yeah, it's good for a collector. Even probably a bit better for the environment than all this plastic as well, too. But yeah, I'd guess you got kids out there, they'd just probably throw the cardboard box away or step on it!
Thanks to Retro Maggie for joining me on an episode of the Retro Dodo Podcast. You can check out the full interview wherever you are using the player or the links below!
