Founder and host of the show, Shane has a great background in computers and video games - over 25 years of experience - not just as a user but as an avid programmer and professional.

At 11, he started working with a TSR-80 Model III (Ah! The old TREK!) then moved through the entire line of Commodore computers (Vic-20 to Amiga), finally making the leap to the evil PC in 1995 (when Windows finally caught up with AmigaDOS). Before he could afford a Commodore 64, he would sit at Sears in the Mall, programming and demonstrating the C64 machines there (selling more C64 computers than the sales people did - no wonder they gave him the run of the place). In 1985, Shane saw his first Amiga (playing Defender of the Crown) and knew he'd fallen in love with computers all over again. In 1988, he got his first Amiga 500 and spent the next 7 years of his live as an Amiga advocate, user, and sometimes retailer. He now does professional web site/application development and writes video games for the PC under the label Dark Unicorn Productions (the name of his former Amiga shareware programming group).

Along the way, Shane did plenty of time on consoles. His cousins had a loaded Atari 2600 (they weren't allowed TV, but were allowed video games ... go figure) and many a weekend were spent playing Cosmic Ark and Adventure. One of his best friends soon got a Colecovision and marathon madness playing Venture, Ladybug, and Donkey Kong soon ensued. In the Navy, Shane went through a Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Nintendo Gameboy (sold off almost immediately to get an ...), Atari Lynx, and finally ended up with a PSOne and Dreamcast. With the death of Dreamcast, Shane no longer believes in the viability of the console market ... "Its nothing but whoring and rehashing titles now. Good mass of original gaming ended with the Dreamcast ..."

Shane began to collect video game cabinets in 1997 when he obtained a dedicated Gauntlet II cab. He went on to get a Xybots (sold), Ms. Pac Man, Super Sprint, and Top Gunner (JAMMA).

In the late 1990s, Shane became involved with classic video game emulation and went went on to run some of the most successful classic gaming/emulation websites in the world (Insert Coin, Amiga Emulation Zone). He started the Retro Radio show in 1998.

Bryan passed away in January of 2005. He is horribly missed by us all...

Bryan, has a extensive experience in pinball, classic arcade and console video games that spans over 20 years.

At age 9, his first experience in electronic gaming came in the form of spending hours on end playing pinball machines such as Ali, Six Million Dollar Man, Playboy, Superman as well as a host of other pinball machines. At the age of 10, Bryan then moved on to console the console video game scene by being exposed to Atari Pong.

In 1982, Bryan's life forever changed like everyone else's when he discovered Pacman. Sad to say that he pretty much robbed and hustled his teenage years away trying to score quarters and sneak out the house to play basically half of the games that can be found in MAME today. He has been lucky enough to grow up in one of the area's where most games where tested at, Los Angeles, California. The list of games include, Cloak and Dagger, Nintendo's Arm Wrestling, I-Robot as well as several other rare (hardly ever seen) arcade cabinets of that era.

On the console side, Bryan has owned a Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800 as well as a Colecovision. In 1983, Bryan wanted a Atari 800 to play Pacman at home but instead was given a TRS-80 Color Computer instead. His life was never the same after that and went on to code the classic Eat and Run (Pacman clone) for several operating system platforms. The game celebrated it's 15th year anniversary in 1999 by being ported over to Windows.

In 1996, Bryan was exposed, in quite a unusual way, to classic gaming. A friend he met on a message board told him about Atari 2600 emulation and pointed him towards the old Node 99 website. From there he discovered Atmospherical Heights and MAME and his life forever changed after that. Bryan then hooked up with Shane in 1997 through IRC and they have been friends ever since.

To quote Bryan Smith, "I am hoping to bring a host of great new ideas to the show. I would like to see all my video game and emulation heroes interviewed on this show. There are so many things that we don't know that goes on behind the scenes that make games what they are today and I want to expose it all for the world to see. These people are so cool when you finally get to meet them in person. I want everyone to see that and that is what I plan on bringing to the show."

Troy Toulou recently joined RGR after acting as an intern at the 2004 CGE. He, of course, has a nostalgic love of gaming and can't help but smile when he thinks of sitting arround the 19 RCA television eating grape-flavored pop rocks and sipping his cherry Pop Shoppe soda while working his way through River Raid.

He definitely enjoys a lot of what modern games have to offer,
but doesn't seem to have much time to play--is it that he doesn't have the time or because there aren't as many 'good' games out there? Maybe he'll find out...

Troy acts as the producer for the shows 'on the road', taking over Bryan's responsibilities on the mixing board during interviews as well as helping with other aspects of the show.

If Troy's name sounds familiar, its because he's mentioned in numerous shows including the famed Ultimate Wizard review :)

Fernando Garcia (a.k.a "Flare") started as a fan of the show with a passion for knowing every single detail of past episodes, plus he is obsessed with counting how many times Shane mentions Dragon's Lair or Don Bluth.

His first contact with classic gaming started back in the late seventies with a mexican-made PONG clone called "El Sensatron"; from there he moved through all console generations including the Atari 2600, Intellivision, SMS, NES, Genesis, SNES, PSOne and Dreamcast.

He is now married, a father of a cute girl and currently works as a SAP R/3 Consultant for a danish company located in Nuevo Leon, Mexico; he still tries to find time to play some of the (few) good titles that modern gaming has to offer on the PC, PS2 and GC; plus the great games from the classic era.

Flare will be doing the incredible labor-intensive task of keywording the entire archive collection. A lot of work, but he's up to the challenge. He also handles regular intern tasks at classic gaming events.

Host of the Hardware Flashback segment, Scott brings another aspect of classic gaming to life on the show. The software that makes up the games we all know had to run on hardware, and the story of that hardware is as great as that of the software. And there are many areas of classic gaming such as pinball that are nearly or totally hardware based. Beyond the circuit boards and wiring is the craftsmanship and artistry that completed the gaming experience, these are the things covered in the Hardware Flashback.

Scott has collected and restored over 50 arcade games, pinballs, and other coin ops including a jukebox, pachinkos, and pachislo machines. His philosophy is that some machines get a thorough cleaning and a tune up and are placed in the collection if their general condition is that of a machine of the day. Machines showing their age or exceptionally rare specimens are given a factory new restoration. Videogame and pinball restoration is always a challenge and demands that you draw from the electrical and mechanical engineering world as well as the craftsman and artistic, it is this multidiscipline aspect that Scott enjoys the most. “Being a leading authority on coin-op restoration isn’t as simple as repairing a bunch of machines, you have to declare yourself one” Scott said of the hobby. His favorite machines he has collected and restored include a 1971 Computer Space (the first coin-op videogame), KISS pinball, Xenon pinball and the machine that got him started, an Asteroids Deluxe.

Scott didn’t start collecting home consoles so much as he never stopped. Other than the time span from the Genesis to the Wii. His collection includes virtually every cartridge type console from the Fairchild Channel F through the Genesis with most of them connected to a vintage color TV in a corner of his pinball room. Favorites include the Vectrex, Atari 2600, NES, El Sensatron and Halcyon.

When not working on an old game Scott can be found building and flying his own aerobatic aircraft and occasionally at his job in a mission control center.