 Chuckie Egg was released by A&F software on many platforms, but originally for the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Dragon 32 in the first flush of the home computer era, way back in 1983. I first played this in my youth on the Dragon 32 and consequently I consider it the definitive version. Others may disagree, but to them I say 'tough!'. It's nothing amazing nowadays, just another platformer, but back in 1983 it was considered something special. From that damned Birdie Song theme tune, to the mad duck which pursued you in later levels, it was the home computer Donkey Kong of it's day.
 The platforming gameplay still holds up well, it's a frantic run around the screen avoiding the chickens which follow preset pathways, leaping on and off lifts, jumping gaps, seeking out the piles of birdseed that temporarily pause the ever present timer, all so that you can collect your dozen eggs. In the early stages the duck sits harmlessly in it's cage, waiting for the timer to run down to a preset value before it springs free, to chase you around the screen at it's leisure. You can move significantly faster than it, but it's all too easy to find yourself cornered between chickens and the duck and nowhere to go. In later levels it doesn't have the decency to wait for the timer, and it's chasing you from the off, not following pre-programmed paths, but actively seeking you out, like a duck with radar - a smart duck, the sort that would be deployed in wars, with trained commandos pointing laser guiders at your egg stealing ass in a bid to end your omelette making ideas prematurely,
There's not much more to be said of it, it has no aspirations over and above being a collecting platformer - get the eggs before the time runs out and you're gold, hesitate and there's a duck raping your face. I've wasted hours of my life playing this damned game, and I've still never finished it. I'm determined though, maybe in another 25 years I'll have honed my ninja egg stealing skills to the point where my arthritic hands can frantically navigate the fat collector around with enough agility to collect the eggs in time, and then it'll be time to learn how to make fritatta
At RF Generation, we have a chat room. As for what goes on in the chat room, consider it like the Unrelated Thoughts thread, only 1000 times better. I'm serious, we know how to have fun. You'd think that a respectable person like your Site Director would not engage in such shenanigans, but pfft, I'll do what I damn well please. Why wouldn't I anyways, especially when there is awesome banter like this:
[21:03] Alfador: IT SEEMS LIKE ALL OF YOU WENT TO PRIVATE SCHOOL
[21:03] Alfador: EXCEPT ME
[21:03] Kimoosabi: THAT IS WHY WE ARE SMARTER THAN YOU
[21:03] * logical123 liked Public School a lot
[21:03] Alfador: I DOUBT IT
[21:03] TraderJake: that's true.
[21:03] Kimoosabi: WELL EXCEPT ROB
[21:03] Alfador: I'LL CHALLENGE YOU TO A BRAIN-OFF
[21:03] Kimoosabi: MAYBE WHEN HE IS DONE SCHOOL
[21:03] TraderJake: i am much smarter than dustin
[21:03] logical123: Agreed
[21:03] Alfador: DAVE PROBABLY IS
[21:03] Kimoosabi: I am pretty sure my sandwich is smarter than [NAME REDACTED]
[21:03] Alfador: AND [NAME REDACTED] TOO I GUESS
[21:03] TraderJake: CAPS LOCK
[21:03] Alfador: 'CAUSE THEY WENT TO COLLEGE
[21:03] logical123: wtf
[21:03] logical123: why did it reflect my new pic?
[21:03] logical123: NO
[21:03] Alfador: I'LL REFLECT YOUR NEW PIC
[21:04] logical123: NOOO
[21:04] Kimoosabi: YES
[21:04] Kimoosabi: YEEES
See, the chat is awesome. We have fun, and I'll protect the real names of people like Alfador and Kimoosabi because I care. Also, they both owe me a shrubbery. So, the question lies, won't you join us? JOIN US, WON'T YOU?
Click Here for our Chat Page
I'm pretty sure most of us here have played that NES classic, Contra. What better way to celebrate its legacy than to turn it into a series of LittleBigPlanet levels? Well, that's what a bunch of people from the NeoGAF forums thought of, and they decided to make it a reality in a collaborative effort called LittleBig Contra. Using a lot of assets (including the paint gun) from the Metal Gear Solid DLC, they've managed to make a near perfect conversion of the original game.
Here's a look at what you can expect:
To locate the levels in LittleBigPlanet, search for the creator's PSN names. I've listed all 8 levels below in this order, "Level Name: PSN Name"
- Jungle: Leonidas2123
- Base 1: SaitoHalifax
- Waterfall: RyanardoDavinci
- Base 2: SaitoHalifax
- Snowfield: NinjaMicWZ
- Energy Zone: El_Beefo
- Hangar: Jaeyden
- Alien's Lair: gevurah22
I've played through first two levels so far, and I must say that I am very impressed with their creative skills. I glanced at the others briefly, and they seem just as brilliant as the two I've already played. The only weak spot are the base levels. Remember how those were a 3D perspective in the original? Well, they tried to replicate it, and the results are decent at best. However, considering the circumstances and the limitations LittleBigPlanet placed on the level creators, I'm rather impressed. If you have a PS3 and LBP, you must seek out these levels as they are some of the best examples of what can be done with LittleBigPlanet's creation tools
Oh yeah, the Konami Code is most definitely in these levels. 
It is with great pleasure that I take this opportunity to welcome three new people to our DB Staff. These people have shown the drive and dedication that we've come to look for from our DB Staff, so we're elated to have them on board. Without further ado, here they are:
DB Reviewers
ga5ket
Madir
DB Contributor
Pop Culture Portal
We're really excited to have these three individuals on board. It's certainly a treat to have them accept the positions that they have, and we look forward to their work. I know that we can trust them to do a great job continuing to keep the databases moving forward!
Released as the fourth game in the Area 51 series, Blacksite is a squad based first person shooter for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC developed by Midway Studios Austin. For those unfamiliar with the series, Area 51 was originally released in arcades in 1995 by Atari Games. The first two games in the series were light gun games, which would later be ported to the Playstation and Satun. The franchise would later receive a reboot in 2005, courtesy of Midway, on the PS2 and Xbox in the form of a first person shooter.
Continue reading Underachievers: Blacksite Area 51
This is my first interview so be gentle 
I had in mind a couple of people that i wanted to start this out with. I ended up starting with St0rmtk421 (aka Eddie). I chose him because he is and has been and still is a very important and integral part of this fine website. But I feel very few people know of him or if they do they don't know much about him.
Many years ago (about the same time RFGen went to MySpace and Wikipedia...)
It was rumored that this was the only known picture of this
mysterious individual.
[img width=200 height=294]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/staff/18.jpg[/img]
Now without any further adieu....
How did you find RFGeneration?
I knew Mike Collins since grade school, so when he told me he was putting a website together for video games, I volunteered to help out. We started talking about creating a games database, and I wrote up a simple search page and game pages. Then we talked about having collections, and it kinda steamrolled from there.
What made you join?
I've always enjoyed video games, even though I never had any real consoles growing up (became more of a PC gamer as a result). I was just learning how to program websites at the time, so when Mike mentioned he was working on a website for video games, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for me.
What made you stay?
Well when I was the only coder for the site I kind of had to stick around to make sure things keep working... But seriously I knew a lot of the original founders and for some reason we've always had such a great community around this site which has always made me want to continue helping out and being a part of it.
Have you met or personally know any of the other members of the website?
Obviously Mike (Lord Nepenthean), and of course the man who has since stepped up to help captain the ship in his stead (TraderJake), and The Evil Leon, all of whom I have known since grade school. I also know Hydrobond, The Maligned Leon, SFS/Three, Seamar, Shimra, Maccabeus, Mrs. C, and MPHDeltaForce. A couple of years ago at Cinciclassic I had the pleasure of meeting Den and Sauza in person, both of whom are great guys.
What sort of work do you do on/for the site?
Back in the day I was the lone programmer who maintained the search, collection, and submission tools. Since then Dave has joined in and has rewritten the new submission system, the blogs, and many other new features. I still maintain and work on the collection and search systems, as well as some other administrative stuff.
Are you an active game collector? If so anything specific?
Can't really say I'm a collector of games. As I said I was more of a PC gamer and I love finding the old shareware games online and giving them a go every once and a while. But as for collecting games, I really don't do that.
Whats your favorite game or series (or even genre if your like me and have trouble pining down specifics.)? Why?
Being an engineer, I've always enjoyed strategy games, RTS in particular. One of my neighbors had the old Genesis game Herzog Zwei back in the day and I always loved taking him on in that game. Another of my favorite RTS games was a little known PC/PS game called Warzone 2100 (which is open source nowadays, so you should all go download it )
What do you do outside of RFG?
I'm currently going to school at the University of Cincinnati to pursue my masters in Computer Engineering.
What are you passions?
Gaming wise, I always enjoy a good LAN party or playing a game of rock band/guitar hero. I also enjoy movies (have a projector in my basement) and I've always been interested in photography as a hobby as well.
So in closing I would like to share one of my favorite(and probably earliest) RFG work related quotes from St0rm:
"Alright people, I didn't make this so you could all tell me how cool I am. I made it so that you can create and share your collections.
SO USE IT!!  "
Wow, it's been a while. I am really sorry about that. You guys deserve more credit than when I feel like it. Hopefully we can get more consistent updates as to our database's grow from here on out.
Anyways, we've had quite a few submissions in the last two months, 4989 to be exact. 2167 new images. Damn! Who did all these submissions? Why, it's people like ga5ket, who is kicking ass and taking names as the top submitter so far of 2009! But, he's not making submissions alone, Pop_Culture_Portal, Funk_Buddy and Fuyukaze are right behind him in the hunt for top submitter. They're not alone though, and these people have also done their part to keep our site growing with 50 or more submissions in the last two months:
- ga5ket
- Pop Culture Portal
- Funk_Buddy
- Fuyukaze
- Tan
- ApolloBoy
- y2ritchie
- eaglebeak99
- Donkey Kong Kid
- Madir
- NES_Rules
- theGrue
- Sirgin
- Data
- Tynstar
- Cambot
- Zenki
- Moriya Hanzo
- Darth Sidious
- Rajaat the Warbringer
- sharp
Of course, when there are all these people making a whole hell of a lot of submissions, we need to have a dedicated group of staff members to review your submissions. Well, who's been doing that, you ask? Why, it's been mostly Tan and NES_Rules, our number one and two reviewers! Of course, Apolloboy, Fuyukaze, bum-man, and Funk_Buddy haven't been slacking around either each doing their part for more than 50 submissions in the last two months. Thanks goes to them for their hard work.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all for your submissions, even if you didn't make enough to get mentioned explicitly in our post, know that your submissions keep our site growing and strong. For that, we are truly thankful.
Welcome to another Random List, now it's no secret that I'm a big fan of video game music, some of my favorite composers include Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, and Motoi Sakuraba. Today's list is a compilation of some of my favorite updates to songs from games of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, I'm sure many of you probably remember hearing many of these songs at some point, as for me many of these songs are nostalgic due to my being young when playing many of these games for the first time. My only real restriction for this list is the the updated song has to be from a game, so no fan made stuff on this list, and all of the songs will be presented within for your listening pleasure. Anyway, without further ado, here are some of my favorite updated video game songs...
Continue reading Random Lists #2: Updated Classics
I've not managed to pick up tons of stuff again this week, encountering a total failure to find anything worth buying in my hometown. Work was a different matter, I hit paydirt in one of the Charity shops, scoring 14 Master System games, complete for 99p each.
Golvellius: Valley of Doom
Sagaia
Black Belt
Pac-Mania
The Jungle Book
Castle of Illusion
Desert Speedtrap
Alien Storm
Submarine Attack
Ace of Aces
Terminator 2: Judgement day
Robocopy Vs The Terminator
Gain Ground
Captain Silver
Oh, and a MB Pac-Man boardgame (1982) for 1.99
Week: 15.85
Months total: 143.81
Year to date: 278.36
Unless you've had your head in the closet for the past 25 years, you've atleast heard of Street Fighter. You know, that game with men who are fighting. In the streets. And occassionally indoors when circumstances permit. However, incase you've been locked inside a bunker with Brendan Frasier waiting the apocalypse for the last quarter century, clutching your copy of Red Dawn as if it were some sort of survival guide for the Commie infested future let me sum up the gameplay of a fighting game - you punch and kick guys who are trying to punch and kick you until someone falls over, twice. Believe it or not, this formula hasn't really changed at all since then, and with good reason. It's fun. If I could make punching people my occupation, I'd give up my life of excess over at Gamestop with gusto and spend all my money on lotto tickets and cocaine for the rest of my existance.
Continue reading Week Old Reviews: Street Fighter IV
Welcome to Ask-a-Blog Numero Dos! Today's question: 'How did you find rfgeneration?'
Fairly simple, but again, let's here those answers!
My story is *drumroll*:
I spend a lot of time on Google. A lot. A lot a lot. A lot times a lot. You get the idea. The year is 2006, and I am perusing the following search query: "Video Game Collection Organizer". At around, oh, I dunno, page 7 or so, rfgeneration.com caught my eye. I clicked it, looked around, and decided it was nice, and something I would come back to. Bookmarked.
Fast forward to 2007, April of '07. I'm organizing my bookmarks, when I see a logo that I'm not too familiar with. 'RFGen'. Out of curiosity, I click the bookmark, and actually LOOK around the site. I missed a great site, and knew I should join up immediately, and promptly so. My official register time stamp is April 22, 2007, 10:31:31 AM, user number 1263. And I have been hooked ever since. The spring/summer of 2008 is when I really got hooked though, and became an active member in many aspects of the site, including the Forums, Blog, Blog Commenting, and Database...
So, there's my story. How's about your story (if you pardon the colloquialism...)?
'How did you find
[img width=234 height=60]http://www.rfgeneration.com/left.gif[/img] ?'
The DSi will be released outside of Japan in just over a month, it's common knowledge that the new handheld is a mere upgrade to the existing DS Lite, but what has truly changed? The goal of this article is to let you know what's new, both from a technical and cosmetic standpoint, and to shed some light on some of the available DSi Ware, so hopefully when you're done reading, you'll know if upgrading to the DSi is right for you.
Continue reading The Nintendo DSi: Is it right for me?
[img width=300 height=169]http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/images/articles/mg-blogs/blog-22Feb09-3_tn.jpg[/img]
[img width=300 height=191]http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/images/articles/mg-blogs/blog-22Feb09-2_tn.jpg[/img]
[img width=300 height=290]http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/images/articles/mg-blogs/blog-22Feb09-1.jpg[/img] I was surfing the tube the other evening and happened across an episode of Madden Nation. Though not particularly foreign to me, I can't fully admit that I had ever sat through any given episode in this series for more than five consecutive minutes. Television offerings were extremely weak that night - Clean House Comes Clean did have its appeal, but ESPN ended up winning my viewing time. In hindsight, "Trish the Yard Sale Diva" and crew would have probably been a more entertaining choice (just for the pure eye candy). Madden Nation was more enlightening for me, and in a way I did not expect.
Being a huge Madden fan since back in the days of the Sega Genesis, I was a bit intrigued in seeing the new generation of footballers duke it out on TV in this latest rendition. I was thoroughly impressed by the skill and complex button combinations utilized to deftly guide their respective team across the digital gridiron. But as much as I was in awe of these adept performances, I was similarly disgusted with the amount of showboating, trash talk and other equally tasteless behavior exhibited by the majority of the participants. I am all about poking some fun as well as personally being the punch line, but these guys just had no class whatsoever. This was not so back in the day. For example...
As you probably know, I am an old school gamer and began my gaming 'career' back in the 70's. My buddy Dragas would shoot over little Marriott_Guys house to huddle around a 13" color television to play a game of Football on my parents newly acquired Texas Instruments TI-99 4A. Now this is as basic as you can get in a football game - a choice of 4 plays on offense and 4 for the defenders. Once your 'rock-paper-scissors' selection is made, you are basically at the mercy of the CPU. While on defense and Drago in a 3rd and 3 situation from his own 14 yard line, I locked into my "Goal Line Stand" formation. I stole a look at him, hoping to get some sort of read on his play selection. By the glint in his eyes I knew I was probably screwed. There are two dreaded words that no one wants to hear while in my current defensive alignment - I was pretty sure those were about to beat on my eardrums. My friend did not disappoint. He sucked in some air and in his best Froggie voice impression uttered those feared words - "The Bomb". All I could do is laugh and sit back and watch the beating unfold. A high-five would eventually come his way 22 seconds later once his football helmet sprite finally crossed into the end zone (this system was slow!). Gamesmanship was always a part of the equation for us and is until this day.
The players on this specific episode of Madden Nation really displayed nothing even close to sportsmanship. Maybe being in front of the camera drove their need to posture to their crew back home. Maybe these guys are asses in real life and slept through life's lesson in humility. Who knows. The over-the-top, ratings-driven antics by these clowns are undoubtedly condoned, possibly even orchestrated, by the ESPN producers of this show. Whatever the case, I would like to assume this is not a fair representation of today's gamer. Maybe I am wrong.
All I can say is this - if I didn't know why I had never before made it through an installment in this series, now I do. Those blowhards were not worth my time. Yes, shame on me choosing to watch it for that 30 minute interval. Shame on ESPN for showing the absolute worst behavior of gamers.
Trish, darlin', I'll see you next week.
On behalf of the Directorship, I'd like to formally congratulate three of our Staff Members in becoming DB Editors. These members have shown the initiative, drive and dedication necessary to be a leader on our site, and we are pleased that they have agreed to rise to the challenge of being an Editor. These three people are:
- Apolloboy
- Funk_Buddy
- NES_Rules
We're really excited to have them take on their new roles. As for what that role is, "Editors act as the leader of a section of the site, being the motivating force behind the growth of the site. Editors motivate, inspire, and lead. They ensure that their section is growing and successful. They also work to solve problems and establish goals for the growth of their section."
Congrats goes out to them! They deserve their positions, and we look forward to their work.
As most of you probably know, the US economy is not exactly in the best of conditions right now. Reeling is a good term to use, really. So, in this time of great uncertainty and sadness, why not check out this lighthearted take on the Second Great Depression?
Well, that explains a lot about the economic collapse. Also, I'd totally buy that game. It's full of win.
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