One Life Left is

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

's first and only dedicated

videogames Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedback ...

FM radio show. It is presented by

Ste Curran Stephen Curran is a British video game journalist Video game journalism is a branch of journalism concerned with the reporting and discussion of video games, typically based on a core "reveal–preview–review" cycle. With the prevalence an ...

, Simon Byron and Ann Scantlebury. Earlier host Robert Howells stopped appearing on the show, to be later replaced by Simon. It includes news, reviews, features, competitions and a weekly studio guest. One Life Left is broadcast on

Resonance FM Resonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station specialising in the arts run by the London Musicians' Collective (LMC). The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and ...

, a London

community radio Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popula ...

station at 19:00 every Monday, and is available as a

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

Guests and features

One Life Left is presented in a magazine style, with guests and features. Guests have included industry figures such as

Jon Hare Jon "Jops" Hare (born 20 January 1966, Ilford, Essex, England) is an English computer game designer, video game artist, musician and one of many founder members of the early UK games industry as co-founder and director, along with Chris Yates, ...

, Charles Cecil, Paul Rose and comedian and presenter

Joe Cornish Joseph Murray Cornish (born 20 December 1968) is an English comedian and filmmaker. With his long-time comedy partner, Adam Buxton, he forms the comedy duo Adam and Joe. In 2011, Cornish released his directorial debut ''Attack the Block''. He ...

. Features range from comedy sketches (for example, Craig 'The Rage' McClelland's video game poetry and Ms. Snac-Man's "gaming recipes") to views from the industry (for example, Derek Williams' Free Market Economy, from the perspective of a market stall owner) and game reviews (for example Talia Reviews Nintendo Games Because They Are For Kids). The show briefly featured a segment by Ariel Angelotti during her tenure at Q Games, which highlighted Japanese development culture and popular Japanese phrases. Since 2009, the show has featured contributions from "Dr. Avatar" who presents an Accident & Emergency segment highlighting the misfortune of classic video game characters. Other additions to the complement of features have been Science Officer's Log which parodies the gaming trope of recorded audio logs, and Lonely Hearts by Cara Ellison which involves the generation of dating website profiles for famous game characters. One Life Left has also recorded from the Develop Conference and Expo. In 2010, they hosted One Laugh Left as part of Nottingham Gamecity 5. This was billed as a night of stand up comedy about video gaming and included turns from each of the three presenters.

Critical reaction

The video games website Kotaku considered One Life Left to be "a sweet blend of light-hearted discussion, music, interviews and ridiculous features", pointing out its uniqueness in gaming and in radio.

Guardian Unlimited TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', ...

's Aleks Krotoski and Keith Stuart have both commented on the quality of the show's podcasts. One Life Left was nominated for the "Best Games Podcast" category both the 2007 and 2008 Games Media Awards, and in 2009, won the GMA "Best Podcast/Broadcast" award. One Life Left was considered one of the ten best podcasts by

thelondonpaper ''The London Paper'' (stylised as ''thelondonpaper'') was a free daily newspaper, published by NI Free Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International (who also own the companies that publish '' The Sun'' and ''The Times''). It was available fr ...

Music to Play Games By

In December 2008, One Life Left released ''Music to Play Games By'', a compilation CD of music inspired by video games. It was arranged by Simon Parkin and produced by Andrew Smillie. The album covers various videogame themes and styles, and has been described as "

chip Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...

indie Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Gaming *Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies *Indie game, any game (board ...

". Kotaku considered the album to be an excellent collection of "chiptunes, remixes, even normal songs that are just written about games."

References

{{reflist

External links

One Life Left home page
* One Life Left'
Archive
Audio podcasts Video game podcasts British radio programmes