|
Originally popularized in arcades during the nineties, fighting games have remained a popular genre to this day. With the recent release of Street Fighter IV and last weeks news that Midway has put Mortal Kombat up for sale, I've decided to focus the next few articles on these two popular fighting franchises. Street Fighter has been around for more than twenty years and was popularized due to it's fluid control and expertly balanced game play that would become even more polished with each release. This first article will look at the first four games in the Street Fighter series, according to the series timeline, which will cover the original Street Fighter from 1987 and the three Alpha games which were released between 1995 and 1997.
Continue reading Gaming in Retrospect 2: Street Fighter
This week's treasure hunting wasn't particularly successful. I did the rounds of all the usual shops, but I only managed to pick up a couple of PS1 games.
PS1
Trash It
Resident Evil
I only paid GBP1 for each of them, so that was good.
Spurred on by the lack of success I had a look through the cheap end of the games that CeX had in stock, and I picked up this lot for GBP15
XBox
Unreal II: The Awakening
Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon
Black
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
I already had a copy of Broken Sword, but sans manual, so this was a good opportunity to replace it. I'm making good progress on the incompletes, 56 remaining out of a total of 969 games.
PS2
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Getaway
Red Faction II
007 Nightfire
Half-life
Headhunter
There's nothing especially amazing amongst the PS2 stuff, but it was time just to pick up some of the cheap stuff while it's still easily available. On another note I did fantastically well with records, but that's not the point of this post.
Spend for the week: GBP17.00
Month: GBP17.00
Year: GBP295.36
When someone says 'Fire Emblem', many Americans and Europeans may not know what you are talking about. The Fire Emblem franchise was introduced to North America and Europe not too long ago, with a Game Boy Advance release titled Fire Emblem, in 2003/2004. Prior to this date, NA'ers and Europeans had only learned of the series via either the import scene, or Super Smash Brothers: Melee, on the GameCube.
But, what many do not know, is that FE has been a long standing, and quite popular franchise in Japan. Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Ken or Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light in English, was released in 1990 on the Famicom, or NES to the rest of the world. On February 17th, 2009, North America was 3rd to recieve this original game (being released on December the 5th, 2008 in Europe) in an all new, remade format, titled Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.
Utilizing the DS's 2 screen interface, this (practically) new game is incredibly fun to play, and has a wonderful background soundtrack.
Learning Curve:
Quite Easy to start with, but as you approach Chapter 5 - 7, it gets progressivly more difficult. It jumps up to this quite difficult-ness very quickly, instead of slowly getting more difficult.4.5/5
 Gameplay/Story:
Awesome! The story is very fun to read, and you feel as if you are actually part of the game, in a way. I won't spoil it for you, but you basically take on the persona of Prince/King Marth, commanding your forces and Leveling up, to save your kingdom.5/5
Replay Value:
Since I haven't actually beaten it yet, I can't say much on the topic of replay value yet. It seems to me, however, that this would be a game that going back to after you beat it makes it really easy. 4/5
Music:
Brilliant. The music fits the tone of the game amazingly, and the composer did a wonderful job. It also makes great use of the DS's fairly high Audio Quality, sounding very nice even through the speakers. 5/5
To sum it all up, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a great game. It has many qualities that make it highly addicive the moment youy begin to play. For the normal DS game price of $29.99, you can get more than your money's worth out of this game.
18.5/20 or 92.5%
Well, it's been over a month since my last entry in the Treasure Hunt Chronicles, and I blame that solely on the weather. There just are not any garage sales or flea markets in the frozen tundra Northeast Ohio this time of year. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's in the 50's today and 60's the next couple days so garage sale season will be here before we know it. Luckily, until then though, I've still got some awesome treasure through some online trading I did through RFGen, Digital Press and GameTZ. So that will be the focus of February's finds.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles '09 - February
Hot off the heels of last week's Random Lists #2, I've decided to go ahead with a semi regular article featuring video game music, which will allow me to cut back on Random Lists so I don't step on Tan's feet since he does the List 'em article. Anyway, today I'm looking back at some of the music from the 8-bit era, and since I've never played a PC Engine/Turbo Grafx, I'll be focusing mostly on the Master System, NES, Gameboy, and Game Gear and for now each game will have only one song per article, unless I make an article featuring a certain game or composer.
Continue reading Melodic Notation: 8-bit Classics Part I
With 46 Master Robots to choose from it wasnt actually very difficult to narrow it down to 10. A lot of them are just rehashes of previous robots, really wierd or simply forgettable.
Anyway we'll start at 10 and work our way down.
Continue reading Top 10 Master Robots
 Chuckie Egg was released by A&F software on many platforms, but originally for the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Dragon 32 in the first flush of the home computer era, way back in 1983. I first played this in my youth on the Dragon 32 and consequently I consider it the definitive version. Others may disagree, but to them I say 'tough!'. It's nothing amazing nowadays, just another platformer, but back in 1983 it was considered something special. From that damned Birdie Song theme tune, to the mad duck which pursued you in later levels, it was the home computer Donkey Kong of it's day.
 The platforming gameplay still holds up well, it's a frantic run around the screen avoiding the chickens which follow preset pathways, leaping on and off lifts, jumping gaps, seeking out the piles of birdseed that temporarily pause the ever present timer, all so that you can collect your dozen eggs. In the early stages the duck sits harmlessly in it's cage, waiting for the timer to run down to a preset value before it springs free, to chase you around the screen at it's leisure. You can move significantly faster than it, but it's all too easy to find yourself cornered between chickens and the duck and nowhere to go. In later levels it doesn't have the decency to wait for the timer, and it's chasing you from the off, not following pre-programmed paths, but actively seeking you out, like a duck with radar - a smart duck, the sort that would be deployed in wars, with trained commandos pointing laser guiders at your egg stealing ass in a bid to end your omelette making ideas prematurely,
There's not much more to be said of it, it has no aspirations over and above being a collecting platformer - get the eggs before the time runs out and you're gold, hesitate and there's a duck raping your face. I've wasted hours of my life playing this damned game, and I've still never finished it. I'm determined though, maybe in another 25 years I'll have honed my ninja egg stealing skills to the point where my arthritic hands can frantically navigate the fat collector around with enough agility to collect the eggs in time, and then it'll be time to learn how to make fritatta
Over the next couple months I'll be taking a trip down memory lane. Those memories will include Robot Animals, Fat Bearded Scientists, Blocks Appearing out of nowhere (seriously), and Mega Busters.
Ill be trying to put up one Top 10/Bottom 10 (maybe 5 in some cases) per week. These lists will range from: Master Robots, Weapons, Levels, Music, Non-Master Robot Bosses, Wily Levels, Regular Enemies, Upgrades From Game to Game and anything else that pops into my head (or is suggested by you guys!!).
We'll start off with something easy and do Top 10 Master Robots. This should be up by the end of the week.
I'm pretty sure most of us here have played that NES classic, Contra. What better way to celebrate its legacy than to turn it into a series of LittleBigPlanet levels? Well, that's what a bunch of people from the NeoGAF forums thought of, and they decided to make it a reality in a collaborative effort called LittleBig Contra. Using a lot of assets (including the paint gun) from the Metal Gear Solid DLC, they've managed to make a near perfect conversion of the original game.
Here's a look at what you can expect:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/qNPBdKQBYHg&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/qNPBdKQBYHg&rel=0</a>]]>
To locate the levels in LittleBigPlanet, search for the creator's PSN names. I've listed all 8 levels below in this order, "Level Name: PSN Name"
- Jungle: Leonidas2123
- Base 1: SaitoHalifax
- Waterfall: RyanardoDavinci
- Base 2: SaitoHalifax
- Snowfield: NinjaMicWZ
- Energy Zone: El_Beefo
- Hangar: Jaeyden
- Alien's Lair: gevurah22
I've played through first two levels so far, and I must say that I am very impressed with their creative skills. I glanced at the others briefly, and they seem just as brilliant as the two I've already played. The only weak spot are the base levels. Remember how those were a 3D perspective in the original? Well, they tried to replicate it, and the results are decent at best. However, considering the circumstances and the limitations LittleBigPlanet placed on the level creators, I'm rather impressed. If you have a PS3 and LBP, you must seek out these levels as they are some of the best examples of what can be done with LittleBigPlanet's creation tools
Oh yeah, the Konami Code is most definitely in these levels. 
I have new games to add to my collection, this was the first game lot that I have won. These include 8 Mega CD demos (which were originally provided with either the Sega Pro Magazines or Mega Power Magazines during the Mega CD's life cycle), a "collectable" Comix Zone Soundtrack called Roadkill (I'm unsure about how rare this is) and 2 backup games.
Continue reading New winnings
Released as the fourth game in the Area 51 series, Blacksite is a squad based first person shooter for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC developed by Midway Studios Austin. For those unfamiliar with the series, Area 51 was originally released in arcades in 1995 by Atari Games. The first two games in the series were light gun games, which would later be ported to the Playstation and Satun. The franchise would later receive a reboot in 2005, courtesy of Midway, on the PS2 and Xbox in the form of a first person shooter.
Continue reading Underachievers: Blacksite Area 51
This is my first interview so be gentle 
I had in mind a couple of people that i wanted to start this out with. I ended up starting with St0rmtk421 (aka Eddie). I chose him because he is and has been and still is a very important and integral part of this fine website. But I feel very few people know of him or if they do they don't know much about him.
Many years ago (about the same time RFGen went to MySpace and Wikipedia...)
It was rumored that this was the only known picture of this
mysterious individual.
Now without any further adieu....
How did you find RFGeneration?
I knew Mike Collins since grade school, so when he told me he was putting a website together for video games, I volunteered to help out. We started talking about creating a games database, and I wrote up a simple search page and game pages. Then we talked about having collections, and it kinda steamrolled from there.
What made you join?
I've always enjoyed video games, even though I never had any real consoles growing up (became more of a PC gamer as a result). I was just learning how to program websites at the time, so when Mike mentioned he was working on a website for video games, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for me.
What made you stay?
Well when I was the only coder for the site I kind of had to stick around to make sure things keep working... But seriously I knew a lot of the original founders and for some reason we've always had such a great community around this site which has always made me want to continue helping out and being a part of it.
Have you met or personally know any of the other members of the website?
Obviously Mike (Lord Nepenthean), and of course the man who has since stepped up to help captain the ship in his stead (TraderJake), and The Evil Leon, all of whom I have known since grade school. I also know Hydrobond, The Maligned Leon, SFS/Three, Seamar, Shimra, Maccabeus, Mrs. C, and MPHDeltaForce. A couple of years ago at Cinciclassic I had the pleasure of meeting Den and Sauza in person, both of whom are great guys.
What sort of work do you do on/for the site?
Back in the day I was the lone programmer who maintained the search, collection, and submission tools. Since then Dave has joined in and has rewritten the new submission system, the blogs, and many other new features. I still maintain and work on the collection and search systems, as well as some other administrative stuff.
Are you an active game collector? If so anything specific?
Can't really say I'm a collector of games. As I said I was more of a PC gamer and I love finding the old shareware games online and giving them a go every once and a while. But as for collecting games, I really don't do that.
Whats your favorite game or series (or even genre if your like me and have trouble pining down specifics.)? Why?
Being an engineer, I've always enjoyed strategy games, RTS in particular. One of my neighbors had the old Genesis game Herzog Zwei back in the day and I always loved taking him on in that game. Another of my favorite RTS games was a little known PC/PS game called Warzone 2100 (which is open source nowadays, so you should all go download it )
What do you do outside of RFG?
I'm currently going to school at the University of Cincinnati to pursue my masters in Computer Engineering.
What are you passions?
Gaming wise, I always enjoy a good LAN party or playing a game of rock band/guitar hero. I also enjoy movies (have a projector in my basement) and I've always been interested in photography as a hobby as well.
So in closing I would like to share one of my favorite(and probably earliest) RFG work related quotes from St0rm:
"Alright people, I didn't make this so you could all tell me how cool I am. I made it so that you can create and share your collections.
SO USE IT!!  "
Wow, it's been a while. I am really sorry about that. You guys deserve more credit than when I feel like it. Hopefully we can get more consistent updates as to our database's grow from here on out.
Anyways, we've had quite a few submissions in the last two months, 4989 to be exact. 2167 new images. Damn! Who did all these submissions? Why, it's people like ga5ket, who is kicking ass and taking names as the top submitter so far of 2009! But, he's not making submissions alone, Pop_Culture_Portal, Funk_Buddy and Fuyukaze are right behind him in the hunt for top submitter. They're not alone though, and these people have also done their part to keep our site growing with 50 or more submissions in the last two months:
- ga5ket
- Pop Culture Portal
- Funk_Buddy
- Fuyukaze
- Tan
- ApolloBoy
- y2ritchie
- eaglebeak99
- Donkey Kong Kid
- Madir
- NES_Rules
- theGrue
- Sirgin
- Data
- Tynstar
- Cambot
- Zenki
- Moriya Hanzo
- Darth Sidious
- Rajaat the Warbringer
- sharp
Of course, when there are all these people making a whole hell of a lot of submissions, we need to have a dedicated group of staff members to review your submissions. Well, who's been doing that, you ask? Why, it's been mostly Tan and NES_Rules, our number one and two reviewers! Of course, Apolloboy, Fuyukaze, bum-man, and Funk_Buddy haven't been slacking around either each doing their part for more than 50 submissions in the last two months. Thanks goes to them for their hard work.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all for your submissions, even if you didn't make enough to get mentioned explicitly in our post, know that your submissions keep our site growing and strong. For that, we are truly thankful.
Ok let me first say this is possibly one of the rarest handhelds that I know of so its very hard to come by. This review will be a bit different because i will go into detail about the levels, bosses items, etc. Anyway here's the review
This is a simplified version of the hit psx game. You play as Alucard, Dracula's son. Alucard however wants to stop his father's evil reign because he is half-human half-vampire and doesn't want to destroy the last of the Belmont clan Richter Belmont. In this simplified version you can pick up weapons such as: Ax, Cross, and Throwing Dagger. Alucard starts his journey with has dagger, but the cool thing is your weapon upgrades as you progress through the game. You have 3 hearts if you lose all of your hearts the game will be over, but you can pick up more they are scarce though so be careful!
Level 1 is the Castle Entrance where you will fight medusa heads and zombies. The final boss of the level is Medusa. She is fairly easy to beat
Level 2 is the Royal Chapel. In this level you have to contend with zombies, medusa heads, and bats. the bats are tricky to dodge. This level has 2 different sections the lower and upper part. You go on the top to dodge bats on the bottom or pick up a throwing dagger and throw it at them,, but be careful if you choose to doge the bats from the bottom you will have to deal with bats attacking from behind. The boss of this level is Hipogryph. He's tricky use the Ax to defeat him and collect the Silver Ring.
Level 3 is the Catacombs where you must fare with the magical spells of the Salem Witches and other enemies from previous levels. The boss of this level is Succubus; defeat her to obtain the Golden Ring, then prepare for the final battle with your father Dracula!
Level 4 you must first fight off a swarm of enemies. After all of them are destroyed you face Dracula and use the Holy Cross to defeat him.
Well that concludes my review of this gem of a handheld. One final word if you see this game anywhere pick it up its worth it.
Here is a link below to see gameplay footage done by me. Please rate comment and subscribe to my youtube acccount.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/cDbuDgUqLm0&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/cDbuDgUqLm0&rel=0</a>]]>
Welcome to another Random List, now it's no secret that I'm a big fan of video game music, some of my favorite composers include Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, and Motoi Sakuraba. Today's list is a compilation of some of my favorite updates to songs from games of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, I'm sure many of you probably remember hearing many of these songs at some point, as for me many of these songs are nostalgic due to my being young when playing many of these games for the first time. My only real restriction for this list is the the updated song has to be from a game, so no fan made stuff on this list, and all of the songs will be presented within for your listening pleasure. Anyway, without further ado, here are some of my favorite updated video game songs...
Continue reading Random Lists #2: Updated Classics
|
|
|
|
Blog Navigation
Browse Bloggers | My Blog
|
We are a community of collectors, gamers and the likes, and some of us enjoy to let the world know what is on our mind. For those members, we have the community blogs, a place where they can publish their thoughts and feelings regarding life, universe, and everything. Some of those members might even choose to write about gaming and collecting! Whatever they write about, you can find it on their blog. You can either see the latest community blog entries in the feed you see to the left, or you can browse for your favorite blog using the menu above. Interested in having your own blog hosted on RF Generation? It's rather simple, first be a registered member, and then click the "My Blog" link that you see in the navigation above. Following those two steps will certainly get you on your way to blogging.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy our entries, rantings, and completely unrelated series of thoughts. We write for you to read, so we certainly hope that you enjoy our material.
|
|
Hot Community Entries
|
|
Hot RFG Blog Entries
| |
|
