I was originally going to write a blog entry on iOS retro ports. The problem is that retro ports on iOS are universally pretty terrible. Games made to be played with a joystick, D-pad, or keyboard simply don't convert well to the touch screen.
Some games, however, do work very well on iOS. Puzzle games in particular flourish on iOS, for the same reason they do on the DS; the touch screen is well-suited for the genre, allowing you to manipulate puzzle pieces or the puzzle board in a direct, intuitive manner. The impreciseness that sometimes comes with controlling a touchscreen with your finger can be frustrating in more action-oriented titles, but many puzzle games are much more forgiving of this device flaw.
Unfortunately, on the app store the success of one puzzle game will inevitably be followed by 50 sub-par clones. The iOS store is so overrun with puzzle games that it can be difficult to find one worth playing. Need help sorting through the masses? Here are a few of my favorites:
Continue reading iOS Puzzle Games
I am have started doing something that I didn't think would be hard, but its not as easy as I thought. I have started playing the Master System games, and I have tried to get all the games official release dates, but so far I have got through 48 of my 1836 games on my list to play, so it will be a while.
I wanted to bring this up because I need some advice.
1. do you think its worth splitting the videos into just games after the live stream? or just leave them as one long video?
2. I came up with a name Throwback Thursday's Play Sega, but should I try and come-up with a logo?
3. do you think any one cares? I like to do this for myself, but do you think its a waste of time doing more then uploading it?
As a collector, I get a lot of people saying " WOW, that's an awesome collection, have you played all of them?" and that's where this endeavor came from.
If anyone wants to see what I have done so far I have them on youtube (
Collectorcast Episode 35: It's My Home
Episode 35 discussion thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...rum/index.php?topic=15948
While Bil is off welcoming the birth of his new son, Crabby and Duke get together to do a show on their own. Of course there are a lot of your questions to answer, and then we discuss the upcoming Retro VGS and it's associated Kickstarter. Are we excited to jump in? Is there a viable business model behind it? Listen in to find out what we think.
Get the show at http://www.collectorcast.com
Follow the Collectorcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Collectorcast
Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Collectorcast
On Stitcher (enter Promo Code RFGeneration): http://www.stitcher.com/RFGeneration
On iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/u...collectorcast/id524246060
On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/Collectorcast
Show Notes
Music: Street Fighter II - Championship Edition (PCE)
Q & A - 9:45
Topic - 56:53
Outro - 1:57:05
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Posted on Sep 16th 2015 at 01:01:29 AM by ( noiseredux) Posted under PC |
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Out Of The Park Baseball 2007
Metagaming is a series where I force myself to play through Metacritic's highest rated PC games, working my way down the list one game at a time. There's no real goal other than giving myself an excuse to experience these critically acclaimed games. Sometimes I'll beat the games, and sometimes the games will beat me.
The #3 game on Metacritic's PC games list is outside my comfort zone. Like, way way outside. Out Of The Park Baseball is a baseball sim. And I'm really not much of a baseball fan. I mean, I can enjoy the sport. But really I think playing it is more fun than sitting and watching it. Or better put, playing a baseball game where you swing a bat is a lot more fun than reading about the stats of those little computer players. But this is a sim. One where you don't actually play in any "action" oriented sense. Nope, this is all stats. It's like baseball is a very complicated text adventure. It's all pen and paper stats. And yet there it is: #3. Looking at reviews, this series has been praised for years. And the 2007 edition has actually sat pretty at #2 until just this year even. Luckily for me the publisher has made this particular edition of the game freeware through their website. So let's give it a chance...
Continue reading Metagaming: Out Of The Park Baseball 2007
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If you remember my Shadowrun Returns review, you might be wondering why I've skipped reviewing Dragonfall to do the latest game in the series. That's a sad tale that goes back to when Dragonfall was just an expansion tied to the original Returns. Dragonfall received a Director's Cut update where it became its own title, and the ties between the original were severed. When this happened, I lost all of my saves. Putting these files in the cloud may have prevented this, but I was unaware this would be an issue before the event happened, and don't trust the cloud in general. I've started another play, and I'm a bit over halfway to where I was, but Hong Kong came out and was fresh. It was not content I've already blasted through before, so the allure to play it was much stronger.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Shadowrun: Hong Kong
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We have talked about some of the things you should do when you first pick up a cabinet and we have talked a little bit about monitors and working on them. Now we are going to talk about the control panel ("CP"). There are lots of important decisions that go into designing them and if you are only going to have one or 2 machines, you had better make the CP count.
Continue reading Arcade Control Panel Design Part I
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Posted on Sep 10th 2015 at 07:56:18 PM by ( noiseredux) Posted under PC |
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Grand Theft Auto V
Metagaming is a series where I force myself to play through Metacritic's highest rated PC games, working my way down the list one game at a time. There's no real goal other than giving myself an excuse to experience these critically acclaimed games. Sometimes I'll beat the games, and sometimes the games will beat me.
It's kind of crazy that the #2 PC game on Metacritic held on to the same position for eight years until Grand Theft Auto V came along to dethrone it earlier this year. Of course this game has been available to console gamers for nearly two years now, but for we PC gamers this is a new release in 2015. It was a game that we waited for - only sometimes patiently. Heck, I bought the strategy guide nearly three months before the game was finally released on PC. Not only did I buy it day one at full price... I made sure to pre-order a physical copy of it. To me it felt like the anticipation had been so high, there needed to be a certain ceremony. The act of going to the store and picking up my preorder was a needed part of the experience. And so you're probably wondering if it was worth all the hype to me. At least I assume you're wondering if you're taking the time to actually read this...
Continue reading Metagaming: Grand Theft Auto V
Here at RF Generation, I've become very comfortable with the group of relatively active members on the forums, and have enjoyed reading all the various blog posts and articles that come out most every day. I'm not a big reader, so I count it a plus that I can snack on these bite-size morsels of text to get a little bit of a vicarious gaming fix. Sometimes I take them in while on a short break at work or in the evening as I wind down for the day, when I have only a few minutes to spare before heading to dreamland and not enough time to ACTUALLY play a game. It is with some anticipation that I look forward to new articles on the site, and am checking every 2 or 3 days to see who has new blog posts, and what new information said posts may hold for me. Truth be told, I've become a minor addict to the RF Generation blogs.
Having said that, I have found a number of articles to be very informative and inspirational. In particular, I found a recent article by RF Generation member 'slackur' to be very inspirational. He wrote about culling a large collection of games, but in a purposeful manner, in hopes of sharing that collection with friends, family, and coworkers, as a means of extending the life of those games, and to keep many of them from languishing on the shelves. Indeed, it made me long for the days of early adulthood, when I lived in a bigger city, and could easily find a half dozen people within a stone's throw who would want to come over and play video games with me. Where do the years go? But, I digress. In my more aged state, I find myself in a small town, surrounded by farmers and ranchers whose gaming experiences are all but a thing of the past. I'm a relatively lone gamer in a sea of non-gamers.
Continue reading Family Gaming Night!
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Posted on Sep 7th 2015 at 11:32:55 PM by ( noiseredux) Posted under PC |
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NOTE: Metagaming is a series where I force myself to play through Metacritic's highest rated PC games, working my way down the list one game at a time. There's no real goal other than giving myself an excuse to experience these critically acclaimed games. Sometimes I'll beat the games, and sometimes the games will beat me.
Half-Life 2
As I write this Half-Life 2 sits comfortably at #1 on Metacritic's list of the best PC games of all time. It holds a score of 96 - one of only 6 games to rank so high. Technically one of only 5 games, as one of them is The Orange Box which is a compilation of Half-Life 2, its expansions and Portal - all games that find themselves just slightly further down the list on their own. So this is how we begin; with the best of the best.
[break]
Now before we get the ball really rolling, how about a little background on the history of me and Half-Life 2. Our relationship started off in a very... very odd way. You see although I actually sorta love FPS games now, that wasn't the case several years ago. Though I had grown up playing stuff like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom back in the day, I became pretty much inept when the y-axis was introduced to aiming with a mouse. And attempting this stuff using twinsticks on a controller baffled me even more. Sometimes ending in feelings of "I have to vomit."
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And then something really weird happened a few years ago: I got this sick idea to attempt to play the unreleased port of Half-Life on the Dreamcast. This was mostly out of sheer curiosity. Not just for the port itself, but for how the controls would be handled on a controller that only had one analog stick. The experience was admittedly strange. But I was able to work my way through the game using this weird Southpaw controller style. And more importantly - I fell in love with the world of Half-Life. After that I immediately decided to move on to Half-Life 2, this time on the Xbox 360. This meant I'd have to get used to twinstick controls. I started my way working through the game, and it was tough. Eventually I gave up somewhere around the first vehicular section.
Not long after this I got bit by the PC gaming bug. And it's been a whirlwind ever since. After spending time with Quake, Quake III Arena and Quake 4, I actually became one of those people who plays FPS games with a keyboard and mouse. And now I can't go back to use a controller! I even got myself a nice mechanical keyboard produced by WASD and installed Cherry Red dampeners in it, along with the wonderful G502 mouse by Logitech - both gifts. And since I've become a keyboard & mouse convert, I've found myself enjoying first person shooters even more. The time was right to revisit Half-Life 2 and finish it once and for all.
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So is Half-Life 2 really deserving of such high praise - the #1 spot on Metacritics PC games list? Dudes... it is. For starters the great thing about Half-Life 2 is everything. It really just feels like it does everything right. Here's a game well over a decade old, and I struggle to find any faults with it. As much as it's gone on to influence countless other single player FPS games, I can't say that any other has nailed everything so perfectly.
What immediately comes to mind is the pacing. Indeed this is where HL2 truly shines. It is such a well designed game that you never really feel unsure of how to proceed. Yet there is no modern FPS trap of making levels entirely out of long hallways. Nope, there's actually lots to explore here. But there's such a natural flow - both to level design and the story itself - that it feels like the you're constantly a moth to a flame. You just know that you're always marching forward. Always making progress. It's genuinely quite brilliant.
The pacing is further applauded thanks to constant variety. In a sense it feels like you're on a rollercoaster ride for the entire dozen or so hours it will take you to get through. One moment you're sneaking through tunnels, the next you're speeding over water on some sort of jet ski. Even the tone of the game shifts abruptly in fantastic ways. The section known as Ravenholm feels like one of the scariest horror game settings and has a color pallet that will make you feel dread. A few hours later you're exploring a beautiful cliffside area.
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The storytelling is also superb. Much like the original game there are no cut scenes here. Everything happens in-engine. You never lose control of Gordon Freeman. You are always a part of the story - never a voyeur. The soundtrack - both musical and voice acting - goes a long way to reinforce this storytelling and the unique atmosphere.
The combat is wonderful as well. There's an excellent freedom to how you might address any given situation. Certainly there are some very satisfying weapons here - from the trusty crowbar, to a perfect-for-silent-sniping crossbow all the way down to far heavier artillery. But it's the gravity gun that will get you killing in all sorts of puzzle-solving ways. Ravenholm for instance leaves you with limited ammo, but a bevy of sawblades and explosives to throw around in a fountain of headcrab zombie blood-rain.
But ultimately no matter how much I gush about Half-Life 2, it's pretty impossible to put into words just why this game is so great. I'm thrilled that I finally pushed my way through, and I'll surely be delving into the expansions soon enough. If you're a fan of FPS games - and maybe even if you're not - you owe it to yourself to experience this one.
If any of you have been reading my blog here and/or on blogger.com then you know that I have been limited in the games I am able to stream due to the fact that I (purposely at the time) got a composite only capture device. I am actually really happy with it as far as what it does and is supposed to do, however, it has gotten to the point where it is quite a limiting factor.
As a collector (and I'm sure at least some of you can relate) not all of my consoles work perfectly all of the time. I am working on getting them all refurbished and in some cases modded. My main roadblock comes in when I want to stream a PS1 game. I have two PS2's, but neither of them will read a PS1 disk (at least one of them did within a year of this blog, but didn't work the last two times I tried) and so I have to use my PS3 to play PS1 games.
If you know anything about connectors you probably already see my issue. The PS3 uses an HDMI connector (I'm sure I could get a composite connector, but that is just silly) and my capture device only has composite. I have a long weekend with Labor Day (woohoo!) so I am planning on doing some streaming. It was getting on my nerves that I may be limited in my selection of game, so I ordered a new capture device off of Amazon and had it overnighted. This capture device is more than twice the cost of my other device, but has composite as well as HDMI inputs for capture.
I am excited at this possibility since it will unlock streaming for any and all of my systems including Wii U and PS4. This allows me to stream absolutely anything from my collection (unless my xbox keeps acting up which only limits me from less than half of my xbox games since half of them run on xbox 360). Needless to say Xbox and PS2's are next to be refurbished and PS2 is getting modded for region unlock, maybe some other fancy stuff.
Anyone else having fun keeping up with refurbishment of their disk based systems?
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I know that some of you are probably disappointed that this isn't a glowing review of Crackdown on the XBox 360. I'm sure that's a great game, but having never played it, I'd like to talk about another game of the same name released on the Sega Mega Drive & Genesis by Sage's Creation in 1990 & 1991 respectively. Crack Down is a port of the original 1989 arcade title of the same name that was developed by Sega for their Sega System 24 arcade board. The game was also ported to the Commodore Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, ZX Spectrum, the Wii Virtual Console (PAL & Japan only), and most recently (2010), the Genesis/Mega Drive version was made available on Steam.
Continue reading Banana's Rotten Reviews: Crack Down
In the deep dark days of 1992, British C64 gaming magazine, Zzap!64 reviewed the game Daffy Duck from Hi-Tec Software giving it an excellent score of 94%. C64 gamers were looking forward to playing the game but sadly the publishers went out of business and rumour had it that only 250 copies made it to store.
Since 1997, C64 expert Frank Gasking and the site Games That Weren't have been searching high and low for the past 18 years hoping to get a copy or some part of the game. Well today the news is out that a copy of the game is available to play. Rejoice for all C64 fans.
To see the full story behind the game please click on the following link
http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/daffy-duck/
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After a great showing at our local fan convention and nearly two years in our tiny downtown location, we were starting to feel more cramped than ever in our store. It had felt small very early on, but it was just getting worse and worse as we had more customers and product coming in. Especially, since we wanted to add tabletop games in a significant way and didn't have the space to do it properly. It was feeling more and more like it was time to start shopping around for a new home for Game Quest!
Continue reading Blog Quest - Location Scouting
It's been a long time since I've put up a "What's Inside" blog, or any blog for that matter. To keep things consistent I looked back on how the other "What's Inside" entries were titled. Apparently there was no consistency, every one of them was written with different formats, some had hyphens some didn't, I didn't even use the apostrophe in "What's" half the time. Of course, knowing myself like I do, this was done simply to entertain me. It kinda worked.
This entry is a threefer, three different Nintendo controllers were in pieces on my workbench today. And pictures were taken. Finding pictures of the original controller's guts online is pretty easy and not that the Advantage and MAX are impossible to find, these might show more detail than you've seen before.
First up is the original controller, the NES-004
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This is my worst controller, which is why I'm taking it apart. I don't think this one even works.
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I, ahem, cleaned it after the pictures were taken.
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You can't see it in the picture but most of those rubber contacts are torn pretty bad, one is completely detached.
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At least a little cleaner here.
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This is harder to get into than I would have guessed.
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Only five of the seven places for wires are used. The other spots are taken up in different controllers like the light gun and the four score I think.
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The tools I made to open up that connector.
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You can see some of the corrosion on the contacts. Don't spill pop on your electronics people!
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The D4021BC. Kinda an important thing for Nintendo's controllers. You can Google it or something.
www.google.com
NES MAX NES-027
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Looks comfy but is a little too small for my hands.
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Did some cleaning before I took pictures this time. See? Given time, I pick up new tricks
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Nothing very witty to say about the MAX I guess.
NES Advantage NES-026
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That's half of your Smash TV setup right there.
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Seven eighths of the weight is removed.
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Two circuit boards! What is the world coming to?
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Two red buttons and the select and start buttons just kinda sit there.
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It's that magic glowing, see-through circuit board trick again!
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Joystick bottom.
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Way out of proportion to the other pics because of the magic of photo cropping.
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If you want to see something closer or from a different angle, let me know. I took way more pictures and they are all way bigger than what I put here.
Hope you had as much fun looking at these as I did taking them apart. Should be easy enough, I'd rate this project at about a 4 out of 10 on the fun scale 
The other day an online friend on PSN mentioned how he was going to upgrade the thermal grease on his PS4 before it dried out and broke the PS4. Initially my thought was I'll simply wait until that day comes, and deal with it then. As I started to think about it, I realized I didn't want my PS4 to break if all I had to do was change out the thermal grease to save it.
A few days later, I set out to do this task. I started right out with a big mistake: trying to pull it apart as I am watching a random Youtube video about pulling it apart. Things are going fine until the part where the fan connector is in the way, and looks pretty fragile. I see in the video that the guy just leaves it as is, and pulls out the motherboard, and leaves the wires connected. I was not able to keep the wires connected for fear of them breaking.
I ended up pulling outward on the wires, and one of the wires broke free. Immediately my reaction is F&CK! I proceed and finish everything up, and while putting it back, I am concerned that this connection won't work so I make an even bigger mistake. I ended up pulling all three of the wires out of the connector, really messing things up. I attempt to push the wires against the connectors in a hope that I would somehow get the fan to be operational, it doesn't work. I pull the system apart again, only this time I REALLY mess things up, and push against one of the solder joints on the connector enough that it disconnects. Now I'm really screwed, and decide to take it to a specialist to get it fixed. After I broke the fan connection, I found another video that showed how to properly remove it, and it simply pops straight up! So annoyed that I did this wrong when it is so simple!
I bring the system in to this guy, and it is obvious that he is a pro. If anyone can fix it this guy can, he has it out and is working on it very quickly (after already setting out to repair my xbox 360 RROD). The connectors are so small that this guy is having trouble, and after almost an hour, he says he would like to keep working on it, but had to go at that point. In my mind I am sort of concerned, but based on what I saw with his skills, I was pretty optimistic.
Fast forward to today, and I call the guy. He tells me that he couldn't fix it, I'm seriously bummed. I am going to Best Buy today to get a new one. Anyone want to buy a broken PS4 with no hard drive? let me know, lol.
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