machinima in history

S4 112 Machinima Class of 2006 | Sims 2: The Fixer – (Jan 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 18, 2024 Leave a reply

We take a look at one of the best machinima series we’ve ever seen this week… from the annals of history. The Fixer series was a crime drama created by Todd Stallkamp (aka Burnt Coffee Productions aka TodNYC28) made in Sims 2 and originally released in 2006. Todd was part of the first brain drain from the world of machinima, and shortly after the release of this series was snapped up by EA Games as a content creator where he still is, ironically now in charge of the Sims amongst other games in its portfolio. We revisit the series in our review, discuss how well its stacked up against contemporary machinima and why its still one of the greatest machinima series we’ve ever seen! Ricky concludes, if Todd hadn’t gone to EA, he’d now be making TV shows and films: ‘… you could take this series, make it live action, use all of the shots that Todd made and put it on Amazon as a series.’



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

The Fixer, Chapters 1, 2 and 3, by Burnt Coffee Productions (Todd Stallkamp) – remastered versions on Phil’s Vimeo channel for the Machiniplex classics –

The Fixer, Ep 1 – Fat Men Run

The Fixer, Ep 2 – Guns, Ghandi and Getting Some

The Fixer, Chapt 3 – One Digit Off

Todd Stallkamp talking about the importance of machinima –

An example of Todd’s machinima projects for EA expansion packs –

The first part of the ITV Westcountry news documentary filmed by Todd and Trace Sanderson –

S3 Special: Machiniplex Intro

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 28, 2023 Leave a reply

In this episode, Phil introduces the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection, a curated selection of machinimas from the early years. Machiniplex was a site created to host classic machinimas at the point that Machinima [dot] com began to assert its energies over the community as a corporate entity. The site was a community endeavour, with both Ricky and Phil playing a pivitol role in managing the project to preserve the original content the community had contributed to the early original Machinima website… until such time as it ran its course. In this ep, Phil and Ricky reminisce about the origins of Machiniplex and its contributors.

To celebrate the release of the curated collection, we have each selected a film we recall with particular fondness and discuss its significance. Phil has remastered each of the films using AI, not always a perfect process, so we also discuss his approach and techniques in bringing the original works up to 4K standard.

We encourage machinima fans everywhere to check out these films, not only were they brilliant in their day but in terms of storytelling, remain some of our favourite creative works against which we often draw comparisons when reviewing latest films.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Blahbalicious by Wendigo and Avatar, 1997 –

BOT by Digital Yoke, 2005? –

Edge of Remorse by Riot Films, 2006 –

The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams, 2006 –

Phil’s trailer for the Machiniplex [Remastered] Channel –

Go to the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection on Phil’s Vimeo channel here – website https://bit.ly/machiniplex or access the playlist here –