It's that time again! Time for another exciting Community Playthrough!
April was a great month full of good old Atari fun courtesy our resident Atari historian singlebanana. Likewise, exploring the magical planets of Magical Starsign was a treat and we want to thank you for joining us on that intergalactic rump. We'd like to thank everyone for their participation and congratulate the Atari Activision Champion who can be found in the thread here.
Last month's games have left us feeling a little bananas so it should come as no surprise that we invite you to join your fellow RF Gentlemen in playing an apish SNES classic and a hidden gem for the Wii.
Hold onto your barrels in this month's Retro Community Playthrough as we work to recover our stolen hoard of bananas from the evil King K. Rool and his Kremling Krew in Donkey Kong Country on SNES. After that it's onto the sequel, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest. Donkey Kong has been captured by Kaptain K. Rool and it's up to Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie Kong to rescue him and keep the banana hoard safe.
Your shadow has been severed from your body and the only way to get it back is to climb to the top of a mysterious tower. Manipulate light, solve puzzles, and overcome enemies in your quest to reunite with your body in Lost in Shadow for the Nintendo Wii.
SEVEN-DAY SCORE CARD: LONE STAR NUMBER-CRUNCHING AND FANTASTIC RISING SUN FUN WITH THE COUNTERFEIT KOOPA KIDS
Week of 14 April to 19 April 2014
This week's episode sponsored by
The Psychotic Knight Fanfic Drama Dinner Theater
Your favorite songfics performed by Mary Sue and the Yaoi Wowies every Friday night
and
McKnight's (no relation) Preposterously Panoramic Palace of Perilously Powerful Peripherals
The gloves are off now
Take it away, guys...
Monday 14 April: Nothing to speak of vidya-wise. However, I did dig up a sizeable batch of other geekin' goodness, with Texas Instruments products dominating the lot. Products like a complete boxed TI-37 Galaxy Solar, a TI-83 Plus, and a couple small mono speakers that put out surprisingly good sound. Also discovered was a Panasonic combo mini-piano/AM radio, a Rokenbok controller pad, and a Radio Shack EC-4051 calculator.
Tuesday 15 April Sweet f*ck all was to be had on this day.
Wednesday 16 April: This all but dead week sprung to life a little when I discovered the first TurboGrafx 16 games I've ever encountered at a thrift: CIB Boxxy Boy and Devil's Crush Pinball for $2.49 each. I even picked up Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, 'cuz it's never a bad idea to have a backup copy of this ultra-rare gem.
I also discovered a couple NES 18-cart shelves for $3.29 each. Each one holds 18 sleeved NES carts. I tried to place the bare NES carts in the case slots, but they were too loose.
[img width=400 height=506]http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzjrwjajhz1qb7555o1_400.gif[/img] Huh-huh-huh, the slots were too loose.
Then I checked to see if my full boxed carts fit in there, but they were too tight.
Thursday 17 April: Picked up my very first Japanese PS1 titles for $4.99 each, including JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Master of Monsters: Akatsuki no Kenja Tachi, and Torneko no Daibouken 2: Fushigi no Dungeon (AKA Torneko: The Last Hope). I also scored a platinum GBA SP for $8.99, a grab bag of PlayStation promo tchotchkes, and the greatest, most awesomest Star Wars game of all time, Knights of Teras Khasi for the PS1! W00T!
Saturday 19 April: A light week ended with a nice uptick, as I nabbed a Skylanders Swap Force Wii U starter kit at Toys-R-Us for half price. I picked it up so I'd have the regular versions of Wash Buckler, Blast Zone, and Series 3 Stealth Elf in my collection. I was also curious to try the Wii U version of the game and all the different controller schemes it supports. While I was there I also grabbed an Easter Fryno, and a Series 2 Jet-Vac. I finished my thrifting day when I hit a Goodwill that's not exactly known for good game prices, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the CIB PS1 titles Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX, as well as Resident Evil 2, for just $3.99 each.
The guy on the front cover up there looks kinda familiar, doesn't he? You don't suppose... nahhh, it's just gotta be a weird coincidence. Probably just a case of deja vu... which got progressively stronger with the turn of each page:
Its been brought to my attention that I might be the only one able to post blogs. Well, not really able, I've just discovered a little trick to getting around all the PHP errors. I actually discovered this a couple years back when I would post a new entry but it would not show up on the sidebar for a new blog post. I've found it also works in the era of the PHP Error Wall of Death.
First, hover your mouse cursor over the Blogs button on the very top toolbar, then click on My Blog. You should see a mostly blank page with the Blog Controls toolbar. Click on Edit Entries. Even if your post hasn't shown up on the sidebar it should still be showing up as one of your entries. Simply click on the one that hasn't shown up on the sidebar as if you want to edit it. Move to the bottom of the page and click on Save and Publish again. It should make it to the sidebar now if its original date is new enough to make it. I don't know if an entry older than the bottom most post would show up as a brand new one on the top, so let's assume that it doesn't unless I'm proven wrong.
Tim Follin is one of the most influential Western composers in the history of the industry. He was rather young to be part of the earliest pioneers, but landed his first job in the video game industry working for Insight Studios at the tender age of 15. During his childhood he had no formal music training but attended a year of Liverpool's Sandown Music College. That was all he needed.
At first he was making arrangements for ports of arcade games with his first work being on his brother Mike's game Subterranen Stryker for the ZX Spectrum. He kept working with his brother for the first part of his career. Their second game was a Galaxian inspired shooter called Star Firebirds for the Spectrum, in which he learned how to use a 2 channel driver. His first 3 channel driver game was Vectron. For his fourth game, he also programmed one of the mini games, as well as the sound for Future Games.
After these first four games Tim and Mike were hired on at Software Creations. There he worked on arrangements for Spectrum and Commodore 64 games such as Agent X I and II, Chronos, Scumball, The Sentinel, Bubble Bobble, Renegade, Bionic Commando and various others. Many of these were nothing more than arrangements to fit onto the ZX Spectrum or C64 for ports of popular arcade games. One exception is the Agent X games.
This trend would mostly continue as the various computers of the late 80s were filled with arcade ports, and Software Creations did a lot of them. He worked on arrangements for ports such as Peter Pack Rat, Ghouls'n Ghosts, and got his first experienced on the NES with the arrangement for Flying Shark which we know as Sky Shark.
Tim Follin was still spending most of his time with the C64 and Spectrum despite his work with the ever popular NES. This could have something to do with the NES not being as popular in Europe as it was in Japan and North America. These PCs of the time were reigning supreme. He did compose the music for Target: Renegade for the NES, then composed for Chester Field, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, and Qix before his last PC game, until later Windows compositions, came in 1991, Gauntlet III for the C64, Amiga, and Spectrum.
A little bit before this he finally moved to the NES full time, composing the soundtrack for Solstice and one of the best for the entire system, Silver Surfer. Say what you will about whether or not the game is actually good, you cannot say anything bad about the soundtrack. He also worked on Kiwi Kraze, Treasure Master, Pictionary, and the Taito version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade before mostly moving onto the Super Nintendo.
One last game he worked on before going to the Super full time were the handheld and Master System ports of The Incredible Crash Dummies. For most of the Super Nintendo titles he worked on he was assisted by another one of his brothers, Geoff Follin. His first SNES game he composed for was Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge. Next he would create music for Leland's Super Off Road, Plok, Equinox, Silicon & Synapse's (Early Blizzard) Rock N' Roll Racing, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, the completed but unreleased Moto-X, and Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. For the Genesis he also composed the unreleased Time Trax, which managed to leak onto the web in 2013.
After this incredibly busy period of his career it took a downturn. He left Software Creations in 1993 and began freelancing. Despite this incredible resume work was slow and sporadic, with the most done in the following two years. He finished his 16 bit days composing the soundtracks for Batman Forever for Genesis and SNES, and Ultraverse Prime for the Sega CD, then a cancelled PC game Firearm. Afterwards he had a few years off before coming back for the Playstation's Batman & Robin, in which he only arranged pieces from the film's score. The 20th Century would end with arrangement for Bust-A-Move 4's Game Boy Color port.
The 21st Century started with Tim working with Appaloosa Interactive for their revival of the Ecco the Dolphin series, with Defender of the Future for the Dreamcast and later Playstation 2. It would take another few years before his next piece of work, Starsky & Hutch in 2003 for all 3 major systems and PC of the time. Ford Racing 2 and 3 were composed by him as well as Future Tactics: The Uprising. His very last game before he officially retired from video game composition, citing irregular work patterns, was the remake of Lemmings for PSP, released in 2006. His work, from its earliest days, inspired many other European composers, as he was able to do things with early soundchips that nobody thought was even possible.
Gungrave is a high octane third person shooter that is heavy on style. It was developed by Red Entertainment and published by themselves in Japan, Sega in North America, and Activision in Europe. The game is heavy on style, looking completely awesome and giving setpieces that feel right at home in what is a nearly mindless action game.
The Gungrave series was created by Yasuhiro Nightow. He might not sound too familiar to the video game crowd, but the anime fans will instantly recognize his style from his popular creation Trigun. I love Trigun, and its one of the reasons I've been tracking this game down for years despite mediocre reviews.
Graphically, the game resembles anime. The characters are cel-shaded and the animation is quite fluid. This is a result of Nightow's experience as an animator. The cutscenes are fluid and in most cases, action packed. All of these scenes tell a story of a drug dealing Syndicate, which the main character is on the warpath against because of a thirst for vengeance.
The gameplay is a bit flawed, and some parts of the game feel almost broken. Technical issues really hurt the overall experience and could have turned this game into a stylish classic in the vein of Killer7 or XIII. There is an unforgivably high amount of slowdown in the game. When there are a lot of enemies on screen with projectiles then the game can grind to a standstill. There's not this much slowdown in freaking Gradius III!
Despite all the slowdown the game is still quite short. I managed to beat it in less than 2.5 hours. That's not a typo. The game has unlockables which you can earn through multiple playthroughs, and the story might make a little bit more sense, but that it is the extent of the game and its story. The extras are actually cool to look through. The enemies in the game are collected and shown off like action figures, still in their original packaging and everything! On higher difficulties you can unlock concept art and just more stuff to mess around with in the game.
This game could have been much more, with some polish it could have been more fun to play. The animations were quite enjoyable, highly detailed and quite fluid. For the most part they were quite short, leaving a bit more to be desired. The ending was rather underwhelming as well. It was a cliche save the girl and ride a motorcycle into the sunset ending. I'm not even trying to crack a joke here.
All in all this game is still rather interesting, with a nice premise behind the story. The gameplay was underwhelming, but the style was certainly there and was presented in a satisfactory way. The story is a bit cryptic at first, but there is a sequel, and anime, that came out after Gungrave. While the game is short at least it is mostly sweet, and doesn't drag on and on like Dirge of Cerberus.
I wasn't expecting to beat this today, it was just one of those moments when you randomly do good long enough to make it to the end.
Of the few games that used the Super FX chip for 3D graphics on the SNES, I think this game utilized them the best. The framerate butchering isn't as bad as it is in the Doom port and generally isn't frustrating to play. The wireframe and polygonal graphics are crisp and don't lend to a tired digital aesthetic; it instead makes targets pop and move in a way where you always know what needs to be lazer blasted into oblivion.
It's a good game to play when you feel like button mashing but not mindlessly so, as you need to pull off some slick maneuvering as well. There are digitized voices that are cheesy and great. The music and sound effects are energy filled and grand. The story is serious yet goofy because it's being acted out by gibberish-talking animals. The contrast works perfectly somehow.
Overall a strong graphic intensive title for the SNES library that helped in its quest to boast better games. It's a bit short until you realize that there are several paths that you can take leading up to the big baddy Andross.
Recommendation: If you liked Starfox 64, give it a try.
Alongside Radiant Silvergun Sakimoto composed the arcade shooter Armed Police Batrider before moving over to the Nintendo 64 for Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber, working with the Quest Trio alongside Hayato Matsuo and longtime colleague Masaharu Iwata. The following year, rounding out the 20th century. The new millenium started with a bang, with a solo composition for the much beloved game Vagrant Story.
The follow up to Vagrant Story included Iwata and Sakimoto composing the soundtrack for Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, a solo composition for Kuusen, and then moving onto Legaia 2: Duel Saga with Yasunori Mitsuda and Michiru Oshima. Next was Tekken Advance before he got to work with Capcom on Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. At about this time Sakimoto, Iwata, and Manabu Namiki founded their own company called Basiscape, which has grown into the largest company of freelance composers.
In 2003 Sakimoto worked with Squaresoft once again on the long awaited follow up to Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT Advance for the Game Boy Advance. He got the chance to work with Ayako Saso, Kaori Ohkoshi, and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu on this project. The next year he worked with Treasure and Konami on Gradius V, then on Stella Deus for Atlus along with Iwata. With is Basiscape crew he helped compose the Cave shooter Mushihimesama, making 2004 a busy year.
His schedule let up a bit in 2005, but then kicked into full gear in 2006. For the former year Basiscape composed Wizardry Gaiden: Prisoners of the Battles, Bleach: Heat the Soul 2, and Zoids: Full Metal Clash. By now many of the games would be credited to the quickly growing Basiscape. In the latter year the list just gets longer, with the Basiscape credits including Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, Digimon Battle Terminal, Digimon World Beta Squad, Battle Stadium D.O.N., and Fantasy Earth: Zero. Last but certainly not least was his contribution to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy XII along with the rest of the Quest Trio, Taro Hasuke, Yuji Toriyama, and Uematsu once again!
Basiscape continued to get many contracts in 2007, and Sakimoto is credited on Bleach: Heat the Soul 4, GrimGrimoire, Odin Sphere, Opoona, Deltora Quest, and continued with his Final Fantasy compositions with Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the PSP FFT remake War of the Lions, and the sequel to FF Tactics Advance, Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. His days beyond the PS2, GBA, and PSP would include the PS3 instant classic Valkyria Chronicles in 2008.
This year would continue with some different games that Basiscape worked on. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road for the DS was one of them, along with Elminage, and Coded Soul. The following year saw the company work on Elminage II, Tekken 6, Lord of Vermillion II, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
2010 saw a return of the old, as well as some newer faces in Sakimoto's life. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was remastered and re-released for the PSP late in the year. But there was also Lord of Arcana that he worked on with Uematsu, and Valkyria Chronicles II as a solo effort. Valkyria Chronicles III released in the following year along with Rikishi: Legend of Paper Wrestling.
I want this game translated so bad.
Most recently he has worked on games such as Dragon's Crown, Crimson Shroud, and The Denpa Men series. An upcoming game with his compositions listed is Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians.
So, we just migrated everything over, but we're moving back!
This new server is just too fast. It reminds us on staff about broadband and new technology. Pages loading when you click them? Pshaw. We need to go back to the golden age of the Internet.
Until we make this switch, I'll be artificially throttling the speed on the server so everyone can get used to it again.
Also, after working with theGrue, we're going to dump the Android app and develop only for Palm.
RF Generation coming here soon!
We feel that this will take the site back to its roots in classic gaming, when you didn't need "day one patches", "DLC on disc", and "stability updates". Things broke when they did and that's the way we liked it!
You're into Pole Position, huh? Well, how about you position yourself on THIS pole! OH!!! Yeah, position yourself right over THIS friggin' pole! OH!!!
Hey, Princess Peach! You want a REAL plumber, you should call on me! I'll snake out your pipes for ya! I'll even pump your septic tank, if ya know what I'm sayin'! OH!!! Just grab hold of my analog stick and I'll barrel-roll your arwing ALL NIGHT LONG! OH!!! I got the mega-mushroom you've been longing for!
Into Tetris, are you? Well, I got the long block you need right here! OH!!! I'll drop it down right into your gap!!! Yeah!
Why don'cha cast a shadow on this colossus! OH!!! Yeah!
Yo Kirby! I got something for you to suck down! OH!!!
Hey Ms. Pac-Man! I got a banana and some cherries for you! OH!!! I gave 'em names, even: Inky, Blinky, and Clyde! And they'd just love to meet your "Pinky," if ya know what I'm sayin'! OH!!!
Yo, Zelda, I got a Link for ya right here! Yeah, I'll link you to your past, present, AND future with my Master Sword while you work my hookshot! OH!!!
Why don't all you Sega fanboys do what Nintenwon't, and use your lock-on technology to blast-process my master system! OH!!!
Hey Master Chief, why don'cha reach for this Halo! OH!!! Make a covenant with this freakin' Halo! Yeah!
--ahhhh, screw it, I can't do this crap anymore. This is easily the stupidest blog I've ever posted on this site-- which, if you've seen my other blogs, is REALLY saying something. I easily lost 25 IQ points just coming up with all those gawdawful jokes. It's said that artists have to suffer for their art, but this is downright ludicrous. Looks like I'm the real April fool here.
Anyway, thank you for your time, and enjoy the rest of your day.
The big server move is going to happen beginning tonight. At 6pm Central time, when I get home, I'm going to begin the change so this site is redirected to our new emergency blog. This will let us finish transferring some items as well as pull a fresh DB backup so we can move it all, optimize everything, and bring the site back up on the new server.
Feel free to get your IRC client ready for the down time.
Server: irc.quakenet.org Room: #rfgeneration
Feel free to stop by and chat with myself and others while this is in the works.
Maybe I'll even start a Google Video Hangout tonight...
Hitoshi Sakimoto has had quite a long and storied career. Unlike many in this series he was able to land a job in the video game composition world quite early in his life. He began creating his own games while in Junior High with a group of close friends after taking a big interest in the growing video game industry. At the age of 16 he was enlisted along with his friend Masaharu Iwata to compose the soundtrack for the shooter Revolter for the popular Japanese PC-8801, which released in 1988. Its easy to see how this game could easily make a career.
The sheer number of games that Sakimoto and Iwata worked on early in their career is hard to gauge, some of the more popular games they worked on were more PC-88/98 games like Carat and Starship Rendezvous. By himself Sakimoto composed the Game Boy port of Bubble Ghost.
1991 was the first sampling of what the Sakimoto and Iwata combo could produce. Devilish released with a solo Sakimoto soundtrack, but the duo combined for other games like Verytex, King Breeder, Metal Orange and the Turbografx-16 Holy Grail Magical Chase. Magical Chase is one of those examples of a rare game that is actually an insanely good game that should have sold well.
Not much happened the following year, but 1993 was a year which greatly diversified his resume. He got to work on his first licensed property, Super Back to the Future. No, not the version you played, but the good, Japanese exclusive Super Famicom version! Throw in Gauntlet IV and Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen and this year makes good montage material.
The following year he worked on a handful of games, one with a new teammate Hayato Matsuo, who he first worked with on Ogre Battle. Sword Maniac, or as we might know it X-Kaliber 2097 released in 1994 for the SFC and SNES. With his old buddy Iwata he worked on the arcade game Kingdom Grand Prix, an interesting shooter and racing hybrid. It was ported to the Saturn 2 years later but remains a Japanese exclusive. By himself he composed the soundtracks to Pile Up March and Moldorian: Hikari to Yami no Shisutaa.
The Ogre Battle trio came back to work on Quest's newest game, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. He did not leave the older Super Nintendo behind though, composing with a big team on the Japanese exclusive Sting developed game Treasure Hunter G. RPGs were not his only genre however, as he would compose the soundtrack for Terra Diver, a game that was on basically everything out in 1996 and '97.
The next couple years was another gold plated run by Sakimoto and Iwata. They worked with a few others on the original arcade compositions for Bloody Roar. They followed that up with Final Fantasy Tactics, going with the mostly intact remnants from Quest over to Squaresoft. Solo he composed the soundtrack for the consistently expensive Radiant Silvergun!
A few new variants have been discovered recently. Variant collecting isn't as clear as we thought it was! Anyways, all game variants known to date are detailed here. The somewhat new ones are UPC stickers on Fighting Force 2 and Monaco Grand Prix, as well as misprints for Marvel vs Capcom and ChuChu Rocket.
Recently I made a few purchases on ebay, and they include some curious items that are poorly documented online. Much appreciation would be given to anyone who can clarify some of these mystery items. So, show-and-tell time!
First off are the Web Browser discs that we know and love.
a) Are any more browser discs out there besides the ones pictured? b) Did Web Browser 2.62 ever have a case or sleeve?
I've seen a few copies of Web Browser 2.62 floating around recently, and it is always loose. Here's a pic for comparison with 2.0
Now here's a new find. I found what seems to be Web Browser 2.0 in a sleeve. The sleeve version (II) also has demos listed on it.
...and a back view.
Surprise! The disc in sleeve II isn't Web Browser 2.0, but is actually the Dreamcast Magazine vol. 6 GD-Rom demo. It makes sense, the demos printed on the sleeve are a perfect match.
Pictured here is a third version of the Web Browser 2.0 packaging. III is also in a sleeve.
... and a back view
I don't wish to reveal what is inside because I would like to confirm with other collectors if it is the correct disc. So here's another question concerning item III pictured above.
c) Does anyone else have the Sega/Net version of the Web Browser 2.0 sleeve? What is inside?
That's all for browser discs. It is time to move on to the next find. For reference our colorful buddies, the Generator demo discs, are pictured here.
These discs have an annoying tab that makes it difficult to get inside.
The exception is when that tab goes missing.
At first I thought someone cut it off. But then I examined it closer. The front is identical, and the back is all text.
When you see it...
...you'll do the Sega Swirl!
That's all for the picture show. I think I've found a new alternate sleeve for Dreamcast Magazine vol. 6 GD-Rom and Generator vol.1 demo disc. Once again, I would appreciate any help on my browser disc questions. Please comment below or on the DP forum thread.
a) Are any more browser discs out there besides the ones pictured? b) Did Web Browser 2.62 ever have a case or sleeve? c) Does anyone else have the Sega/Net version of the Web Browser 2.0 sleeve? What is inside?
Banished is the current indie darling in the gaming world, but for reasons quite a bit different than many other indie titles in active development. Banished is a city building and management game released on February 18, 2014. It is developed by Shining Rock Software, which is one man who spend three years developing and polishing the game. With the current trend of early access games getting funding to help with early development and receive feedback from players during the active development process, similar to the way Minecraft was before their official release.
Banished is quite different than many other city sims on the market, and if you're still looking for something to wash the taste of last year's SimCity disaster out of your mouth then Banished might just be for you. You will need some time to figure this game out though. There are no tech trees, no buying blueprints or trading for ideas. There's not even form of currency, only a trade system based on goods bartering.
The early game is brutal as you will quickly learn the most important needs for your villagers, food, firewood, and housing. Even if you have two of the three you can expect to watch your village die off in the first or second winter. The weather is absolutely brutal in this game. Difficulty selection allows you to experience the game in completely different ways. Playing on easy or normal will give you access to at least one type of seed for farming and at least one for orchards. You will also have a higher starting population to build on faster. On hard you have no starting building resources, just some food, tools, and clothes in a rickety cart. You have no seeds for farming anything.
You must trade for seeds and probably some other goods as you build your industry up. It will take time though, as you must wait for children to grow up, and must have housing for young families to move into so they can make a bunch of babies. Fast expansion of a population might seem like an easy fix, but soon you will be begging for food, clothes, tools, and firewood while you watch your village die off.
Anyway, the UI is incredibly crisp and clean. You can pull up windows when you want to view them, or toggle them on to view them all the time. They can be dragged anywhere you want them to rest. Reminds me of some good old Rollercoaster Tycoon times, pull up that lazy Handyman and watch him in the corner, make sure he's emptying those trash cans.
Luke is working on mod tools so people can add their own changes, tools, buildings, features, and changes to the game that they see fit. After three years of development its not hard to see why the guy would be tired and not willing to develop his own DLC for the game, but it hasn't been completely ruled out yet. This is a game that had an instant community build around it, so the mods should be good to expand on the game.
The learning curve is incredibly steep. It took me about 6 hours of total failure before I managed to build a rather successful town. I experimented with year 2 trade builds and managed to score seeds by year 8 and start farming somewhat early.
There are an incredible amount of somewhat hidden mechanics in the game. Markets are important to make sure people have an even distribution of food in their houses, otherwise they stockpile whatever they can find. Town Halls keep track of various statistics and let you accept nomads into your village. Trading posts can be used for trading materials of course, but also as a form of emergency storage planning.
The main resources involve wood, stone, and iron. You'll need them build pretty much anything and everything. Villagers can be tasked to jobs at anytime with one of the various UI windows. This game is deep but rather limiting in the late game. By then you should have plenty of food and resource production to prevent massive die offs. There are many other resources that villagers need to be happy, such as clothes, tools, firewood, and food. I can't tell you how many times I had towns die off because of a lack of firewood or food in less than a year.
This is a game that is deceptively simple. There is plenty of depth to be found for one who enjoys exploring. If you're a simulation fan and want something that will cleanse your palate, this little one man indie effort might be able to. Banished is $19.99 on Steam and Shining Rock Software's website.
Metroid Fusion is awesome. It's a very worthy successor to Super Metroid. Fusion improves upon the previous game's controls, allowing the player to pull off more complicated moves smoothly. Exploring the space station setting's maze-like paths are rewarding and fun.
The art style combines organic and technological sci-fi elements to build upon the Metroid universe. Samus's quick monologues when descending elevators to newly opened sectors give insight into her character and show her determination and will to successfully complete her mission. On top of that, a few familiar beings from games past make an appearance as well.
I'm surprised this game in the series isn't as talked about as Super and Prime. It's a shame that no 2-D Metroid games have come out in over a decade. On a side note, Gameboy Player: Best Nintendo peripheral ever.
Recommendation: Play this game after you play Super Metroid.
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.
