I know its been a bit of radio silence from me over the past two months. I've been busy with life but have found some time to work on the rebuild which will be the focus of this post.
First off, all the game and hardware data has been migrated! I know things are probably not 100% perfect as its hard to verify the large amount of data with changing and standardizing it so much. I'm hoping its very very close though and the next piece I'm working on will help me to test that. I'm currently working on migrating my personal collection to the new structure and getting the new collection tables setup in the new database. Since I obviously have familiarity with my own collection I can more easily compare the migration of my old collection records with the new. Once I have more confidence in all of the migration aspects, everyone else's collection will be migrated as well.
Speaking of collections, I have taken this opportunity to implement a newer feature on the database side (it won't be visible of course until the new site is actually running but its good to bring it up now). I've added support for admin configured, console specific tracking columns and user defined custom columns at a folder level. That may seem confusing so here's an example of each:
- Console Specific: In the US, many Turbografx-16 / CD game came with an outerbox that held the jewel case. An admin can configure those systems to have an outerbox quantity column that can be filled in when adding a game to your collection.
- User Specific: Maybe someone is really interested in tracking the games in their collection folder that still have their registration card, they can setup a custom column to add a quantity for registration card.
On the more technical side, a friend and I have been doing some backend work within AWS to get a test site working. We have a test domain registered and configured SSL certificates for https support. We are currently testing ways to host the site as a static webpage, basically meaning we can drop our html files into a location and be able to access them from the test domain, its sort of how the site works now but more modernized. We also believe we have a path forward for the API called a serverless API. Its kind of a recent buzzword but all it really means is we can setup an API without having to manage any infrastructure but with a lot of extra benefits we don't have today. We can more easily scale parts of the API that are used more for instance. It also lets us only pay for the requests that are made. Hopefully this will be cheaper than a flat hosting rate.
Oh and one last thing. I was able to make two small improvements to the current site. First, and more visible to everyone, comments you add to entries in your collection are now visible when you do a csv export. CSV export limits are now much higher (before it was capped at 10000 records, now its 100000). The second, SQL connections are now terminated much sooner. This won't mean anything to most people but if you noticed the site randomly going down, this was because the connections were being exhausted and not cleaned up. This should lead to greater uptime for the site overall.
Hello again! I'm back to discuss the progress on the site rebuild. For this entry I'm just going to talk a little more about the issues I uncovered while performing data migration into the shiny new database.
Before I get into too much details, I would like to say that the migration efforts are actually coming along quite nicely and I think I'm nearing the final steps of moving everything over with the games (aka games & variants) table being the last one I'm in the process of tackling.
Now let's get into the issues during the migration itself and how some of them were resolved. First off, this was a fairly big undertaking. I already talked in detail about the issues with free form fields in the data in the last dev log. All of the company, person, genres, etc have been standardized in the new table. One other free form field proved to be much more complicated - control types (controller on the game page). This was so varied it was hard to even do accurate fuzzy matching to get good results. The original plan was to try to map the listed control to an actual accessory, for instance "standard controller" would map to the Dualshock 2 controller for a PS2 game. This led to me adding a field in the database to set a default controller for the console family. This works for the most part but any specialty controllers get much harder to map without manual intervention. Furthermore, consoles like the 32X and Sega CD add-ons didn't have their own accessories - just using the ones of the genesis. That let to another table to support compatibility mapping between consoles. Of course that's not the last of controller/accessory compatibility, there are instances where some accessory only work with specific consoles within a family. One example is the TurboDuo game pad is not compatible with the original Turbografx-16, this needs another table to support mapping what accessories work on individual platforms within a console family.
This might all sound a bit frustrating or counter-intuitive but it makes the data much more robust while also eventually allowing more searching, sorting, and filtering options for the new site. Having the proper relations between all the data points is a good practice for this kind of data and will also cut down on all those errors and inconsistencies found in the existing data.
Currently, most of the data has been moved over - consoles, accessories, companies, people (shout out to ApolloBoy for helping with the person data).
I have been writing an application that will take JSON files of the data in the existing database and generating SQL queries to run in the new database. I've used it for all of the migrations so far and the game data is no exception. However, its also the most involved table. For each game or variant, up to 15 different tables need to be updated. Its a lot but ideally in the future, this will open up a lot of possibilities. For instance, we'll be able to search for all PlayStation 4 games released in the US that are 1st person and metroidvanias. Or we can find all the games that Square and Nintendo collaborated on. Further, we can add things like collection stats beyond just how many games for a platform you own. There are many more similar examples that I hope we'll be able to support in the long term.
So what's next after data is migrated? I'll be able to start putting together some back end APIs to allow access to this data and work on getting actual site mock-ups on how things can look. Once some mock-ups are created, I'll be sharing them in the discord for community feedback. Its still a little early but once some of these pieces are functional, it'll also be easier to get the community involved by verifying data and looking into proposed features. There is still work needed to migrate the forum pieces as well but I'm mostly focusing my efforts on the main collection tracking portions to start with.
I hope this helps give a glimpse into what's happening behind the scenes. If there are any questions/thoughts/concerns you can put them in the comments below or reach out to me in discord.
Hello. I am koola, and . . . I think it's fair to say that I am a fan of the Everhood series, despite some big issues I have with both games.
I hear a lot of people comparing the first Everhood to UNDERTALE, but that makes about as much sense as a comparison to me as does another comparison I've heard: Wii Music and Trombone Champ. I described my thoughts on this comparison at length in my article specifically devoted to Trombone Champ, but Wii Music is what i have since began to call a "strict" rhythm game (in the vein of games like Rhythm Heaven, MUSYNX, Rock Band, or even something like Melatonin, while Trombone Champ is more of a music game in the same vein as something like Geometry Dash, BIT.TRIP FLUX, or games like Taiko no Tatsujin or Fairhythm on easy mode. Everhood is a game in this genre I would consider to be "music games" that are specifically focused on rhythm, while UNDERTALE is more of an RPG (albeit one with bullet-hell battles) than anything.
. . . I got the first Everhood as a gift for a friend back in September 2024. I had seen the store page once or twice and thought, "Hey, this game looks pretty interesting." Also, I had a vague memory of some people saying that it was kind of like UNDERTALE and that it was pretty good. He liked UNDERTALE to an extent, and so I figured he'd enjoy it. I also figured that since, at the time, this friend and I had recently made a Steam Family group together, if he didn't enjoy it, I could go through it.
That friend does cyberschool and attends Civil Air Patrol, but when he's not busy with either, he has a fair amount of free time. As such, because he wasn't busy with a whole lot around September, he was able to knock out the 6-hour game in about three weeks. He and I talk often at our youth group, and so I asked him without spoilers how the game was. He said that he liked it, but that it was harder than other games he had played.
. . .I was not aware at the time how much he was withholding from me based on me asking for him to describe it to me without spoilers. As such, if you want to not be spoiled, please do not continue reading this article.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EVERHOOD AND EVERHOOD 2 BELOW
I played Everhood for a bit while he was still going through it, got stuck, abandoned it, and came back to it several months later. This is now a pretty common occurrence for me. When I came back to the game, I started to really enjoy the characters and story. I beat it rather quickly because of that.
. . . I was not ready for everything that Everhood threw at me at the end. I really liked the first half of the game, and if they credits rolled at the point when you get your arm, I'd probably put the game in as something that's close to DELTARUNE or Pizza Tower mentally, in terms of how much I liked the game. However, the fact that you are tasked with killing everyone "to free them from their eternal suffering" even though they just get reincarnated and sent to a different location in Everhood does not make sense to me. I also . . . really did not like having to murder some of my favorite characters. . . .
However, as I previously stated, I did enjoy the characters and the storytelling in the content of the game that doesn't involve, uh, killing everybody. I beat Everhood (well, I didn't really finish it, I just killed Flan and then cried and realized I kind of don't really care about finishing the game anymore so I looked up the endings and lore online) around February 26. Liking the characters and the overall game design, I was excited for a sequel, especially one that wouldn't have the same issues with the ending as the first one did.
. . . What made me think that the second one wouldn't have the same issues as the first? Well, essentially confirmation bias: the fact that many things were improved. The art style, user interface, and overall production value of the game were all leaps and bounds above the first one, and I noticed that many complaints of the original were addressed in this release.
Prerelease, all that I had heard about Everhood 2 (besides what was contained in the trailer) was that the ending was a bit of a letdown. I learned about this from Steam discussions. Now, I had found that from a specific Steam discussion thread that was talking about the ending, noting that "you just killed R" (that was all I remembered) and "that was it?" Foreshadowing. . .
Opening the game, I immediately recognized several grammar mistakes. The game is 10-12 hours long (according to the developers. My Switch says that I have at least 15 hours on the game), and as such, I was concerned that this would be a theme throughout. It . . . was. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the best at grammar, but I could tell that this game needed a good proofread. From what I hear, this was the same with the first Everhood at launch, so hopefully this aspect of the game will get better with time. Many people online don't seem to talk about the fact that this game is riddled with typos; I think a big reason why is because most of them are so small to the point where your brain will auto-correct them and you will be easily able to understand what's being said.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the music. As I have described in previous articles, most of the time after I complete a game, I will add some of my favorite songs from its soundtrack to my big general playlist (I don't really have any other playlists that I listen to.) Everhood 2's soundtrack takes up over 30 songs of that playlist. (Most other games will get up to only half of that.) It is by far one of my favorite soundtracks to listen to, joining the likes of UNDERTALE and Pizza Tower. I believe this is mostly because of the soundtrack's switch in direction from the composer Chris Nordgren to the composer Cazok. Cazok has much more of a rock style of music, and uh, being a teenager, I like that. That's not to say that Everhood has a lack of good songs (I like "Frogs are Friends", "Space Dub Town - Dub", and "Flower Shop" and love "Suspense"); I just happen to be a bigger fan of Cazok's music style.
Another thing I heavily enjoyed would be the combat. Reviewers of Everhood 2 will commonly say that the updated combat was their favorite part of the game; I don't necessarily agree with that, but I will say it is one of my favorite parts of the game. I really look fdorward to every opportunity for combat, including the random encounters (except for the "defend this person sequences").
Overall, I enjoyed the writing despite the typos. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the ESRB rating does not mention this and despite the fact that it was absent was from the first game, Everhood has a few uses of profanity. Other than that, the writing was fun, and I especially enjoyed the characters of both Riley and Sam. Unfortunately, as many before me have pointed out, the ending leaves much to be desired. You kinda just . . . kill Riley . . . and the game ends, with a fake win screen . . . that transitions into the real credits, and then you get told by Shade how nothing really matters. (Which is also said by the fake Riley in effect with "All is vanity", but I feel like that's more referring to the New Spiritualist idea that life is an illusion and consciousness and all that jazz.)
. . . The general sentiment I see surrounding both games' endings (among those that enjoy them and don't share my critiques) are that they are meant to be art, not consumed as products, but rather to be reflected upon and added to your, uh, brain . . . catalogue? (I don't know how to phrase this.) I don't really agree with this idea. Everhood's ending definitely seemed like the developers were trying to go that route, especially with the multiple times it asks you if you want to stop killing, the fact that you cannot play the game on that save after you kill everyone, and the fact that the doors are encouraging you to go through with it, but I feel like if they were trying to put that philosophy out there, that they should have thought about it more. If the whole idea is "life is suffering", and "immortality is bad", then why would being killed and being reincarnated in a different location with the same problems solve that issue? With Everhood 2, the "games as art" mentality starts to fall apart for me. Given the many typos, the several bugs at launch, and the weird . . . bad ending, it makes me definitely feel like the game was rushed. This is only aided by the fact that the writers create several setups that simply do not have payoffs, and that weekly battles are a thing. The idea that many of the ending's defenders are saying is that "it was mean to to be a statement about how nothing really matters, and fiction is pointless, so why don't we end it in such a way that seems horrible? It's just a game. It's a statement that nothing in fiction really matters. Entertainment sucks." . . . and yet they have weekly battles? This just feels like an excuse for a bad ending to me.
I am not meaning to say that you should not play Everhood or Everhood 2. Like I said, I did enjoy both games, and I quite often go back to Everhood 2 and play a few battles. The games are well-designed, and I'd recommend them to people. Just . . . don't turn to them for escapism, or get too emotionally invested in them, like I did. I recommend them, and as I stated at the beginning, I think it's fair to say that I am a fan of the Everhood series. That's all.
I've been koola, and I've never seen a game have as many random and real characters as Everhood 2.
(Everyone from Genghis Khan to videogamedunkey . . .)
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Posted on Mar 18th 2025 at 01:50:09 AM by ( Misto) Posted under devlog |
Hello, its time for the second entry discussing progress on the RFG rebuild. I know its been a little quiet on the front page in this regard but work is progressing. This time I'm mostly going to focus on the database work that is ongoing.
As I mentioned in the previous dev log, we have a large amount of data that we are planning to transform into a new structure to allow us more flexibility in adding game data. However, this means we need to take all the existing data and move it to a new database. This isn't a simple task since we are not performing a one-to-one migration. A lot of the data needs to be cleaned up and reformed into the new structure. The first hurdle is fixing the developers and publishers fields. If you've ever added an entry to the site, you know that those fields are free form text - meaning you can put any text you want in there. The problem that has is we have a lot of duplicate entries, spelling errors, and different styles people have used. Take, for instance, a game with two developers (A and B) - I've seen all of the following different styles in the DB:
- A / B
- A & B
- A and B
- A with B
- A, B
- A; B
- A (B)
- A (for PC) / B (for Mac)
Not to mention duplicate entries (not including typos) for different company designations
- A, Ltd.
- A Ltd
- A, Ltd
- A Ltd.
- A Limited
This makes it very hard to migrate into a "Company" table to normalize and very hard to manually go through the data to "fix" it. We have nearly 15000 different unique entries just for companies. I am slowly going through and fixing these to populate a new table that we can tie games and hardware to. We also want to pull out all of the single person names to populate a "person" table that can be used for game credits as well as developer/publisher fields. The good news is once its done, we won't have to worry about duplicates or typos going forward. When submitting a game, you'll just need to select the company from the existing values (don't worry there will be a way to add companies as well if needed). Further, since its hard to verify that there still won't be duplicates after this, I'm planning on adding a "merge companies" function for site admins in case there were mistakes in the migration.
Once the companies are migrated, there will be a few smaller tables that will need the same treatment such as controller and genre fields. Then a more programmatic approach can be taken to migrate all the actual games and hardware and tie them to new entries for all the mentioned fields - standardizing all the data. This data work will also allow us to start building concrete APIs and UI mockups to move forward which will be much more tangible for most people reading this.
Anyway that's all for this one, I hope it was a fun read. Once more progress is made, I imagine entry 3 will discuss some more of the data structure and API work that will need to happen to move forward.
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Posted on Mar 3rd 2025 at 10:07:41 PM by ( slackur) Posted under Update |
I probably don't have to convince anyone this has been a very tough season for illness. The flu, at least one stomach bug, and a variety of other nasty things have been hitting folks all around, and our family has been in the crosshairs.
Our household is finally feeling a bit better, and after over a month of failed attempts it looks like we will finally have a new account linked to the donate button this week. Next the plan is to set up the raffles for fundraising and start setting up for some fun podcasting. 
That's the plan, anyway 
Hey all, and welcome to part 2 of me cataloging the evolution of my new video game room. Today's focus is on the custom cocktail arcade cabinet.
https://imgur.com/30fTSmJ
First off, I'd like to mention that I 100% could not have made this on my own. My partner and I ran into John of https://www.heydorksfurniture.com/ at the Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo in 2024 and started talking with him about our need for a new coffee table. He mentioned that he had a prototype mocked up in his mind and to contact him when we were ready. I cannot stress how affordable this table was, as well as the clear and constant communication from John...A+, would highly recommend to anyone else looking to get custom gaming shelves done.
With our input, John did literally everything except programing the Raspberry Pi 3B+ that acts as the brains of the cabinet and did one heck of a job! The cabinet is covered in wood veneer and has T molding on all the corners/shelf sides, similar to a real arcade cabinet. The bottom section is basically an adjustable shelf, which is currently set to hold boxed games (i have a few more shelves and pins in storage).
Each player side is currently setup in a diamond style 4 button layout, with the 1 player side controlling the coins, Start for both players, and some additional function keys. I have spare control panels that I can drill to make a 6 button layout, but for now, we don't feel like we are missing out on anything.
https://imgur.com/4CTqXH5
Under the hood is where the real magic happens - no literally, the top flips up like a car hood so you can work on the interior! A flat panel monitor (yeah, i know...no CRT here) is half onto the top with some brackets as the "lid" is flipped up to a vertical position. Inside, you'll find the Raspberry Pi i mentioned earlier, and IPAC controller interface, a stereo amplifier, a power strip, and a wireless USB keyboard (for troubleshooting).
https://imgur.com/ag6bBaX
There is also a secret inputs section on the bottom - 2x USB ports for additional controllers and an HDMI input for the monitor. Since the speakers are wired into the monitor, and not the Pi itself, it makes it really easy to plug a Switch in for some multiplayer when friends are over.
https://imgur.com/lafzAsC
I rotated the screen in the software of the PI and added a theme that looked good vertical. Unlike most other RetroPie builds I've made, I'm painstakingly adding games on at a time to ensure compatibility and controller mapping, hence the arcade and NeoGeo only so far.
https://imgur.com/lJ4EZUn
Vertical games look amazing as you'd expect, but standard definition games have a pretty cool work around: dual monitor mode! Using a custom mapper, I can duplicate the screen so that each player has a properly arraigned screen. This part takes FOREVER and has to be applied game-by-game to work correctly, but the results are stunning, especially in person.
https://imgur.com/433kr7f
Overall, REALLY happy with the way this one came out and wouldn't change a thing (except a more powerful Pi, but that is incoming). Tune in next month, when I figure out what else to talk about lol!
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Posted on Feb 11th 2025 at 03:06:36 AM by ( slackur) Posted under Retro |
PSN was completely down last Friday and into Saturday. Our family hosts a weekly gathering that includes playing Magic: The Gathering, watching movies, playing video games, and whatever else strikes the group's fancy. Four of us have had a regular Friday night firefight with Helldivers 2, and thus we were not pleased with the downtime.
I was reminded of one of many reasons why I am a physical collector and retro gamer. While I do very much enjoy many modern games, my preference is always going to be more towards anything S.O.A.P.: Switch On And Play. No worrying about updates, online connections, installation issues, hard drive space, etc. Video games should, ideally, accommodate us more than the other way around. They exist for us, yet we are slowly getting to the point that the expectation is to rearrange our lives around them.
We recently picked up the Atari 7800 "Plus", and as weird as it may sound I found it to be the perfect modern update to a classic system. It is truly SOAP; not even menus to fuss around, it pretty much just works. Of course HD resolution is overkill for 2600 and 7800 games, but boy do they look nice! Original controllers plug right in, the games take a moment but load right up, and it plays everything I've tossed in without issue. It even runs the Halo 'port' from a few years ago.
In fact, my favorite gaming hardware purchases over the last few years have all benefitted from this SOAP mentality; the robust Evercade Library, the fantastic Analog Duo, the Genesis Mini II, even the cheap Hyper Mega Tech Super Pockets. (I love that name, it sounds like something twelve-year-old me would name a portable.)
At this stage in my life, sometimes a few minutes of gaming is all I can squeeze in. When I sit down for my daily exercise bike gaming time, if there are technical issues that take time to resolve I just move to the next gaming option. When I sit down and play something with the kids, we don't want to rearrange our limited time window around what a game will allow us to play; we just want to jump in and have fun.
Our Friday night quad will likely be back defending Super Earth this coming Friday, Lord and servers willing. Yet as the years roll on, our physical collection is getting more precious each year, and not just in terms of monetary value. Having lots of options that don't depend on modern gaming tropes means we can always game on.
Oh, in case you were wondering what we ended up playing? Um... the board game Thunder Road Vendetta. But my point still stands!
Well, gang, we made it -- 2025. (Again.)
RF Generation is old, make new content for it, site refresh, yadda yadda...
I'll skip the pleasantries. I'm planning on returning to one article per month again, depending on what my time schedule allows. As such, I was wondering and wondering about what my first article for this month would be. Several ideas floated around in my head -- a Nintendo Switch retrospective, an article about ANTONBLAST, another article about Animal Crossing: New Horizons...
What I landed on today, the day before the month's end, was to spend some time talking about one of my favorite little toys to play around with this month: SmileBASIC 4.
So what makes SmileBASIC 4 special? Its story? The captivating gameplay? The music? (Well, I do quite like the music present in the app...)
...SmileBASIC 4 is a programming app for the Nintendo Switch. It is essentially a closed-off simplified BASIC IDE, (with some pre-built limitations that clever souls have found out a workaround for) with the ability to save your projects as a file and upload them to a server full of programs.
In other words, it's programming Super Mario Maker. Back when I was in my young "let's code! I wanna code now! LEMME HAVE AT IT!! AAAAAAA" phase, I quite often checked around certain quarters to try and find any sort of simple coding app. One of these ended up being the Nintendo Switch's eShop. Sure enough, I did find what I was looking for -- two coding apps were present on the eShop: the aforementioned SmileBASIC 4 as well as an app titled FUZE4 Nintendo Switch. (I may get back to FUZE in a later article.) SmileBASIC 4 seemed right up my alley, so I peer-pressured slackur into buying it for me. I tried it out, and I was able to learn some simple commands and have extremely simple projects going on, but after a couple of weeks I abandoned it. I was also interested in the online functionality, but when being hit with the fact that you can only download one program without a Server Ticket (which to me at the time sounded like the Server Tickets were scummy mobile game microtransactions making it into My Nintendo Console), i abandoned it and didn't return to it for several years.
Fast-forward to the Christmas season of 2024. I am in the Christmas spirit, i.e. actively checking the eShop to see what I may buy if I receive a Nintendo eShop gift card (as one does, right? This is normal, right? Right? Right?!) when I decided to look through my list of deleted games. Sure enough, good ol' SmileBASIC shows up there and I decide, "You know what? It's been several years. My own game has gone through several iterations and has received a final released version since then, and I am currently working on a second game. plane I'm going to try and figure out this program."
I went to the coding tutorials section again, viewed one, and decided, "I'll get back to coding later; I want to check out the games, even if I have to download them one at a time." Download them one at a time, I did, for around two weeks. In that time, I was able to pick out several games that I thoroughly enjoy that I shall now list:
Tiny Huge World: Although this may at first sound like that one Super Mario Galaxy level or like a game jam game in which you manipulate object sizes, this is actually a very simple, extremely floaty platformer about a white block. The entire game feels very tech-demo-y, and is very buggy, but is pretty fun. This was also the first time that I saw any sort of 3D in SmileBASIC (it's presented in a 2.5D sort of view), a technique I am very fond of. It has a lot of levels and even a level editor. Go give this one a try using the access code 4PKKE8VHV.
CELESTE Classic: A full port of the original PICO-8 game. I don't think I need to go into more detail about this one to explain how cool it is. Its access code is 45KYV334J.
Finiti - 3D Engine: A simple, efficient 3D basis for making games. Its project file comes with several cool tech demos. You can find it at 4ANXXXX.
RALLY500 PARA4: A simple elimination rally game. The game is split up into several checkpoints wherein you need to have passed enough cars to pass. There are wide turns, and avoiding the cars is fun. I've found it helpful as one of those games that you can just turn your brain off and play. You can find this one at 4N3S33EXY.
MARBLE RUN 3D DEMO: This game reminds me of one I saw in Dreams, named Ball World Adventures. This one has less expansive, yet more creative levels in my opinion. The access code for this one is 4K28XW3KE.
Fairhythm: A very fun, simple rhythm game. This game has the highest production quality overall among all of the SmileBASIC games I've played, the most features, and is one of the most fun ones. I'd highly recommend the app for this game alone. Check it out using its access code4C44EX394.
Neon Driftway: This is the one I was the most impressed with. This is essentially, neon-infused vector graphics Mario Kart, and it plays exactly like it. I'd recommend this one to just about anybody. The whole thing is super polished, and my only issue with it is that there is only one track. Its code is 4TAMVE3QJ.
Overall, I'd very much recommend SmileBASIC 4. It truly shows what creative people can do with even the most simple of items and commands.
(I just got back into this because I ran out of Nintendo Switch Online...)
Ah, Final Fantasy.
After a long and, frankly, ridiculous series of confusing events, the Pixel Remaster compilation of the first six Final Fantasy games became available physically for Switch and PS4 for under forty bucks total. (This was during the end of 2024, and the price has jumped up again since then.) I will readily admit to some FOMO during the initial sold-out launch before it was later confirmed to be re-released for a cheaper price. By the time it became more widely available I was comfortable waiting until a further sale.
Why did I want the compilation? It is kind of absurd, as we have in our collection possibly every other physical NA release of almost every game in the series. SNES, PSP, PlayStation/2/3, GBA, DS, 360, PS4, PS5, etc. We have the CD soundtracks to at least half of the games, several versions of most of the guides, and the Spirits Within and Advent Children movies. We already have the ready ability to play all six of the first games in several ways. Why on earth would we need another?
The short answer is that I just like the series! The best (IV and VI in my opinion) are some of my favorite games, the middle tier are generally better than average RPGs, and even the least preferable often have some interesting ideas. Some of my favorite characters, music, and story beats come from Final Fantasy games. Having six games (with orchestrated soundtracks!) all on one disc/cartridge with a few extra bonuses and QoL improvements (although missing some added content from other releases) was enough to get me to bite, although as mentioned I definitely waited for a sale.
My history with Final Fantasy goes all the way back to the first game on the NES. (I stil have my second CIB copy, although the poster is hanging up in our basement.) I had already finished Dragon Warrior and a few C64 dungeon crawlers, and when Nintendo Power hyped this new release and even published a guide for it, I was pumped. It didn't disappoint, although my thirteen-year-old brain would have been forever stuck without that Nintendo Power Strategy guide. I grinded for hours and hours after school, determined to 100% the game. I would put it down for other games and then pick it back up, but I often forgot where I was and just kept leveling my characters and wandering around.
And then, the Super Nintendo was announced. I was simultaneously delighted and saddened; it looked amazing in magazines, but I was a poor kid and my parents had scrounged years before to get me the NES. I had traded and hunted garage sales with chore money to build up the meager twenty NES carts I owned, and they would be my only possible method to acquire a new console.
A friend got his SNES and our friend group was amazed. It sealed the deal; I was determined to find a way to get one. In the back of a gaming magazine (Electronic Gaming Monthly, I think) were lists of dollar amounts FuncoLand offered for Nintendo games. After some simple math, I found I could trade my NES and all of my games to get a shiny new SNES. My parents would buy F-Zero so I had more to play than Super Mario World (which I had already completed at a friend's house long before I got my own copy.)
I got $14 for Final Fantasy. I remember because I debated about letting it go, but there was no other way. I tried to finish it but by then I just didn't have the time. I reluctantly mailed off (!) my NES and all fourteen games. The next few weeks felt excruciating, but one day the mail delivered the gaming console I still have to this day, yellow tint and all. And I played Super Mario World and F-Zero for hours every day after school, loving every minute and scrounging to rent every title as it came in to our local store.
About a year later, I overheard a classmate discussing an epic narrative of dark knights and redemption, of chivalry and summoners, of dragoons and magic. I literally thought they were discussing a movie, but I later found they were gushing over the epic story of a game of which I was only vaguely aware; Final Fantasy II for the Super Nintendo (actually IV, but that's a different story.)
I waited and waited until our local rental store got a copy, and then waited more as it was always checked out. When I finally got to play it, I was amazed! I fell in love with the story, I found the combat much more interesting and entertaining than the first Final Fantasy, and even my dad (who never had interest in any video game) commented about how much he enjoyed the music. I had my progress reset a few times in-between rentals, but I never minded too much. When I finally secured my copy and eventually saw the credits roll, it cemented itself as one of my most cherished gaming memories.
By the time Final Fantasy III (actually VI) released on the SNES, my High School friends and I were racing to see who could get a copy and complete it first. We swapped copies of SNES games back and forth to play through, including FFII, but this one we each wanted for ourselves. It did not disappoint. Once again the music, characters, story, and gameplay simply elevated the experience to a sublime epic. To this day I still give both SNES Final Fantasy games equal billing as all-time personal favorites. (Yes, there was also 'Mystic Quest,' but I consider that a spin-off.)
As the years went by and more Final Fantasy games came and went, I played most near the time of release. Some I really liked, some far less so. While personally those two SNES titles remained the height of the series, I've still liked the majority of the games and I think pretty much all of them were worth my time.
There are more Final Fantasy stories to regale, such as when my beloved wife surprised me with a new copy of Final Fantasy VIII on the same day I didn't tell her I went and bought a Dreamcast (we were realistically too broke to have bought either) and sleeping my way through Final Fantasy VII, but this is already getting away from where I wanted to go with this write-up.
I never did go back and finish the original Final Fantasy, even as I bought another copy to complete our NES collection. I also wasn't import savvy and couldn't read Japanese, so I never played through the Famicom Final Fantasy II (which is completely different that the SNES game.) I always intended to correct that, and though the GBA Dawn of Souls release would have been perfect I still hadn't gotten around to it. Then the Pixel Remasters were announced, and I was determined to play through them.
I have to say, at my age and stage of life the Pixel Remasters are the ideal way to play these games. The built in maps, the EXP and money boosters, the quality of life improvements such as retargeting after a monster dies, the absolutely gorgeous music, all work to give a 'seasoned' gamer like me the experience I want while respecting my time. I was able to truly enjoy the original Final Fantasy and I was surprised at how it was simultaneously primitive and revolutionary for the time. The story was simple but had more content than I remembered. The flexibility of the party system made it fun to tinker. I still liked the fantasy tropes lightly mixed with sci-fi. It may have taken 35 years (gulp!) but I am very glad I 'finally' played through it.
Next up was Final Fantasy II, based off the original Famicom version. I had always heard of this as the black sheep of early FF games, primarily due to the complete overhaul and changes to the traditional leveling system. Perhaps due to the Pixel Remasters tweaking this system, I didn't find it more difficult, just different. (I know this is at least in part due to the original penalizing stats while others increased, such as when casting enough spells a character's intelligence would go up but their strength would go down. The Pixel Remaster version does away with such penalties.) To my delight I enjoyed it completely! Once again I was impressed with a much fuller and more detailed story, though still simple by later standards. The music is as good as the rest of the series. The characters, while set, are extremely flexible in their builds and less defined by roles. Some of the puzzles and maps were very obtuse and the encounter rate is way over the top, although once again the Pixel Remaster comes through by allowing encounters to be turned on or off. Overall, I came away quite satisfied by the time I saw the end credits.
I'm taking a break and working through the Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana remake/port, Ys being another series with which I have a long and colorful history. It is serving as a fun palate cleanser before diving into the remake of the Famicom Final Fantasy III, the only other game in this compilation of which I have yet to experience. (I played through the PlayStation port of Final Fantasy V upon the stateside release.)
Maybe you don't have a history with these early Final Fantasy games, and therefore they won't hold the same magic. Maybe you are curious about 'classic' JRPGs and want to see where they came from. Many a gamer these days started with Final Fantasy VII or even later, and these games represent a completely foreign experience. What I can definitely say is, I'm very glad I picked up this compilation and 'finally' got to cross off a few on a backlog that started when I was a whole lot younger and had a lot more time on my hands...
Hello and welcome to the first RF Generation Dev Log!
For a quick introduction, I'm Misto, one of the volunteers working on bringing RF Generation into the modern era of websites. If you are not aware, dev logs are commonly used to document and bring awareness to the efforts, struggles, plans, etc of all the work that we are doing behind the scenes throughout a project. I'm hoping that this will be a fairly regular type of blog post just so everyone can see that, yes work is being done - whether its visible or not. There has been a lot of discussion and mentions in the recent blogs about the site redesigns but I wanted to use this first post to outline all the steps that need to be done before anything can even move forward. Also this post will be long so get ready.
First and foremost, as many of you know and what's been mentioned in past blogs, RFG is pretty dated. Not that its a bad thing per se but it does limit us from expanding or building on top of what is in place. Right now, much of the site is running on outdated software and we really don't know if any upgrades or updates will break current functionality. Most of the original developers have since moved on as well, so we are stuck with a bunch of hacked together legacy code. What I've been working on currently, is creating a separate server that mimics the current site configuration but running on the latest and greatest (operating system, hardware, PHP/Perl versions, and database version). I did manage to get the OS and database migrated successfully but I'm still working on getting the actual site code moved over. The test server I'm running on is in AWS (Amazon Web Services) which has some free tiers which are perfect for this upgrade test. Unfortunately, we have too many images in the database and they don't fit on this tier (free tier only has 60 GB of hard drive space and we have about 25 GB of games images alone!).
This brings me to my next point - costs. The unfortunate reality is hosting a website outside of a basic blog isn't cheap. A lot of software and hardware needs to come together to make anything run and it all costs money. Just knowing that we can't run the server on a small server with a 60GB hard drive, means we need to pay for more space on the server. I mentioned before that I'm using AWS to host a test server. I ran through multiple configurations to determine costs based on the requirements I think we would need in a worst case. Requirements are the obvious like CPUs and hard drive space, but also the less obvious - how many visitors does the site get per day, will the server be running 24/7 (yes for us), how many requests do we get, are there spikes in traffic (for instance does most traffic come between 10-11PM on a Wednesday), how big are each request size. All of this needs to be taken into account. Most basic and cheap webhosting are going to run into limitations for anything beyond a simple wordpress site.
The good news is with AWS (or similar cloud provider), I think a lot of the costs I calculated so far are around the current server costs. But it gives us a few benefits to move. One is scalability - did your server go down unexpectedly? Just spin up a copy of it. Need to make changes? Just spin up a test server and make changes before pushing them out and hoping for the best. There is also another potential benefit, the possibility we can get away from cPanel. cPanel is great for a lot of things, but as we grow, its hard to use and difficult to manage with a team of programmers and other volunteers. I can't find a good way to give access to other people without giving them full server access. Its also a completely managed service (meaning the software, site, databases, and images) are all stored on one server (remember the 60GB limit above, cPanel takes up about 20 of that alone). It also limits you to specific programming languages and other supporting software you can use. Its also about $30 a month for a license. We have discussed in the Discord a full site rebuild, using a cloud service like AWS, we can utilize services that could allow us to make a more robust site while also potentially coming in a bit cheaper than what we currently pay.
Moving on from server configurations, lets talk data. RFG has a fantastic amount of game and hardware data but it can be organized in a better way. A lot of you have pitched in with ideas and we've come up with a schema (how the DB is organized) that we think will address some of those issues. First is the games - we've built in a sort of hierarchical structure to better organize them all. I'm going to use an example for this of my favorite series - Resident Evil. First you have a "Franchise" or the "Resident Evil" franchise, this will have any shared game info (like creator, first game release, etc). Most of this is more for fun than anything but it could also be used to see how many games in a series you are missing. Then we have the "game", this could be "Resident Evil (2002)" for instance. This will have all the shared info for a specific game (alternate titles, descriptions, etc).
Under that is what we mostly care about - the "variant". The Variant will be things like the original GameCube North American release or the Wii re-release in Japan, etc. These are the games that are all in our collections. Variants will now optionally support a lot more data than we currently have
- Credits
- Multiple developers/publishers/distributors
- Listing for bonus physical goods for collector editions
- Flags for homebrew, digital only, full game on media, online only, cross platform support
- Print run of the game
- Inclusion of download codes
- Required or supported controllers
- Hardware or OS requirements for PC games
- An appears in option - tie games to compilations
- Flag as a pack in games for consoles
- Standardization of genres and game modes
- Multiple images for each "type", as in multiple front box images or cartridge images
I think that about wraps things up for this post. As usual, let us know what features/improvements/bugs/etc that need addressed. It may be a long time before we can get to it but I wanted to show that progress is being made behind the scenes. I'm hoping soon we can have a better idea on what path forward we are taking (some of this is dependent on costs and how much we get in donations) but in the meantime I'm working on getting a git repository of the current code setup to give developers access as well as somewhere we can document and submit issues or requests in a more formal way.
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Posted on Jan 27th 2025 at 10:36:18 PM by ( slackur) Posted under update |
The site continues to undergo backend revising and experimenting. Also, a new account is in the process of being set up for our server fees. That process sure is slower than we hoped, but it is moving along. My current goal is to start the raffling for donations as soon as we can, hopefully early next month.
Given that we are a nonprofit site with bills to pay (kept as minimal as we realistically can) we hope to re-engage community involvement and get some traffic back to the site. Yet I enjoy the tight-knit community of RFGen and consider it one of the last 'comfy' places left on the 'net where I don't have to worry about people and content. Thus, while we don't exactly predict explosive growth, we do want to keep everyone on the same page about 'generating' (wink) and maintaining a healthy place. As we gain members and interaction, we want to be welcoming and patient. We have had to kick folks out in the past, but only as a last resort. Members have come and gone and still occasionally stop by. Our question for the moment is, when the relaunch is more in full swing and new forums and tech are installed, what would you like to see here at RFGeneration?
I'm intending on spearheading a new "RFGeneration Nation" podcast. I'd also like to re-engage a forum for limited release physical media.
What else would you like to see on RFGeneration 2.0?
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Posted on Jan 21st 2025 at 05:51:46 AM by ( slackur) Posted under Update |
Our new tech team is going over our options moving forward, and the bad news is our current patchwork of code can't really be fixed past a certain point. RFGeneration, at least as I've been told, started as a learn-as-we-go project by a dedicated group of friends. The result is a bit of a snarl of loose ends and hard knots, patchwork elements and now-outdated programs. I'll be honest, hanging around the Discord as the smarter guys talk about it makes me feel like I'm eavesdropping on a foreign language conference call.
The good news is, we are all on board to create a better, more robust site using the pieces we can transfer (most importantly, the database) and re-establish our little home on the 'net! I've repeated a lot of this on previous posts, so this is a reminder that we aren't going anywhere. There will undoubtedly be some bumps in the road, as our current setup is kinda tricky to test any fixes. Just because a backup copy works with changes doesn't mean it will upload correctly, especially with some of the outdated backend stuff.
Our coders and consultants are evaluating what software to use to build a new site and import what we can. There is a good chance we may have to have the site go down unexpectedly when we are testing something new, but rest assured we are backing up everything we can before that would happen (and if possible, I'll try and warn folks here on the site) and we be back as soon as possible.
For those here and hanging around, thanks for your time and support, and keep the comments and posts coming!
It was the reveal to end all... eh, yeah, really it was just a teaser confirming the Switch 2 is a Switch Pro. Bigger screen, actual stand (although I think the OLED model is a smarter design for such), Joy-Cons that appear upgraded from baby-sized hands to small child-sized hands, magnetic connections to replace the rails that have failed in three of the five models in our household, and a few seconds of Mario Kart, which may be a new game or simply an upgraded version of the current (albeit fantastic) one that released almost two hardware generations ago. All while being backwards compatible for software but not hardware. Sure, there will likely be some great Nintendo games that will look prettier and that couldn't run on the regular Switch, but by all accounts thus far this looks a lot like a 1.5 rather than a 2.
I'm absolutely delighted!
Ours has always been a Nintendo household. We have every Nintendo generation thus far, including oddities like the Virtual Boy and most of the Labo releases. We have a Wii U demo kiosk whose loud fan lulled my sons to sleep in their youth. Every member of our family has their own Switch, and they all get played weekly if not daily. Sure, we play all sorts of other stuff (the PS5 is usually my go-to for my daily exercise bike workout) but if there is one shared gaming love in our family, it's probably... Jackbox party packs. But also Nintendo.
A friend of mine was sharing his disappointment over the Switch 2 reveal, grumbling that it wasn't going to be as powerful as the current PS5 and Xbox Series. However, I'm very satisfied that Nintendo is consistently doing their own thing. Why would I want the big three companies following the same path? The one feature I wanted in a new Nintendo system was highlighted in the announcement; backwards compatibility.
Being a physical collector, this is a huge deal to me. Out of the last several generations of gaming hardware, the PS3 stands out as having an excellent library that is currently locked to one console, a console known for hardware failure. Emulating the notoriously difficult Cell processor is still a work in progress, and I assume there will be more and better options in the future. But thankfully, it seems more hardware generations feature some level of backwards compatibility that do not. It makes sense, from a certain standpoint, as it allows for easier integration into a pre-existing software eco-system and helps consumers on-board to new hardware. I know from a salesperson point of view, explaining to customers that the newest PlayStation and Xbox can also play the previous generation has been a major factor in folks buying into the next generation of hardware.
Of course I want to see new Nintendo games in 4K at 60FPS, and hear all of the neat bells and whistles in 7.2 Dolby Atmos. But perhaps even more, I'd love to see some original Switch titles running on improved specs. There are so many Switch games I haven't gotten to yet, and the idea that they may be boosted up on a newer system by the time I get to them is quite the sales pitch for me.
Another factor in my expectations is that, like the original Switch and unlike the PS5 and XSX, the Switch 2 formfactor is portable. For many including my own family, that portability makes Nintendo's system the go-to just for the convenience of not being tied down to a TV. The Switch, I'd argue, is really is more of an evolution of the DS line than of the Wii or GameCube before it. We know our gaming laptops are generally underpowered, dollar-for-dollar, compared to their desktop equivalents. No one was surprised when the PSP, Vita, or other portables were less powerful than their console siblings. The Switch 2, like most Nintendo hardware, won't be near top-of-the-line tech when it comes out. But if history and rumors are true the price will likely be reasonable, and although I'm not looking forward to re-investing in more controllers and accessories the most important part (the games) will already be there and waiting.
The original Switch was quite groundbreaking despite the lower-than-competition specs, and Nintendo has pulled that trick off quite a few times now (the Wii, DS, and even the original Game Boy.) I'm kinda glad Nintendo hasn't tried to re-invent the wheel every time. The 3DS was a fantastic addition to the DS even without the 3D, and the Game Boy Color was a great upgrade to the OG, as was the Advance to the Color. Our Wii was playing as many GameCube games as it was Wii games.
There is more than enough room in the console video game industry for Nintendo to do their thing while Sony and Microsoft to do theirs. I can understand why the Switch 2 will be disappointing for some folks. As they say, not everything is for everyone.
Meanwhile, I'm having to figure out how to 'responsibly' upgrade five systems in the future...
Hey RfGen-ers! Its been... *checks notes* ...far too long since I’ve made a post, and with the website revitalization project under way, we all need to do our part to keep the content mill flowing!
(note: as imbedded images are currently broken, please use the attached links for images...i'll adjust once things are back to normal)
The past few years have been less than ideal for a number of factors, but for all of the bad, there has been a tremendous amount of good. One of those “good” things is that I finally bought my own home in late 2024, and figured this space would be a good place to catalog one of the coolest projects I have planned – a dedicated video gaming space!
https://imgur.com/NMubhy9
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Here is the view from the door – not much of a looker yet, but when you move in between Thanksgiving and Xmas and have to make a whole bunch of repairs to get things livable, the “fun” places tend to take a back seat.
https://imgur.com/22l5EE5
Off to the left we have:
- A crappy plastic cabinet holding controllers and cartridge games for Genesis/N64/Atari
- Two large bookcases for NES/SNES/PS2/GC/Wii/NDS/3DS
I’m really fond of my RfGeneration Golf Competition medal hung on the side, along with another controller organizer, as well as my power glove in an acrylic case just barely in shot cause I’m bad at photography.
https://imgur.com/qiXYxBL
The centerpiece of the room is currently an IKEA Kallax that holds my Flat Screen and far too many systems. I’m still working on wiring, so I don’t have my cables hidden or even properly organized yet. It’ll look better later on, I promise. Off to the left is a CRT that I rescued from the trash that looks fantastic! Its one of the weird flat glassed ones and has a perfectly clean (no scratches) screen.
https://imgur.com/SvkNwyJ
Next, two IKEA Detolf cases hold (almost) all of our Amiibos. If you ever wanted to know what too many Amiibos look like – this is it. These were awful to move. Switch/PS4/Xbone all sit on a shelf behind a bunch of Kirby and Pokemon toys.
https://imgur.com/RgvJgQv
This section is the rest of the disc games (WiiU/PS3/X360/PSX – over on the bottom right)) as well as a small Vita collection. Two more Detolfs – one for handhelds and another for the minis from the god-awful Dark Souls board game. I’m working on 3D printing some more stands/extras for the handheld case, so it’ll be in better shape when I do a more in-depth look later on. The DS minis are my white whale: they REALLLY need to get painted and I’ve only done a handful. Having all of the gray minis out finally has been giving me the motivation to fix it.
https://imgur.com/gXfwkcT
Last and absolutely not least is my custom-made shelf/cocktail cabinet. This guys needs an in-depth review soon to go over all the cool stuff I had built into it (shout out to https://www.heydorksfurniture.com/ for doing an amazing job!).
That's it for now! Look forward to a bunch of changes as I start to unpack/fix more stuff!
~Neo
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Posted on Jan 13th 2025 at 10:33:03 PM by ( slackur) Posted under Update |
As RFG slowly rebuilds, we've got some thoughts to ponder. How do we want the database organized and configured? What is our balance of legacy compatibility, efficiency, and speed versus utilizing newer programs and systems that make the site better integrated with modern devices? What can we do to spur community involvement while maintaining our comfortable and friendly atmosphere? If Die Hard is a Christmas movie, does that put the NES Die Hard game technically in the same genre as Daze Before Christmas? Is the Games Advent Calender 2024 any good and will there be a 2025 dlc update?
Fortunately, I don't have to figure all of this stuff out alone. While our Discord channel has been essential, we want to open, drive, and keep conversations going here! In that spirit, I hope to soon introduce our new team working on the site, to give some more keys to those who can work on the backend, give more permissions to db editors, and welcome some new folks who want to help.
Feel free to chat in the comments if you want to be part RFG in a bigger way but are waiting to have access to do what you can. We are all volunteers here, so we understand that it is always a matter of getting to things when we can.
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