So, uh, past tense. Here's what came out this past week:
Playstation 3
Xbox 360
Nintendo Wii
•Call of Duty: World at War •Mirror's Edge •Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 •WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009
•Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts •Call of Duty: World at War •Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 •Mirror's Edge •Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 •WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009
•Big League Sports •Block Party •Bratz Kidz: Slumber Party •Call of Duty: World at War •Candace Kane's Candy Factory •FaceBreaker K.O. Party •Guinness World Records: The Videogame •Hasbro Family Game Night •Imagine: Party Babyz •Kung Fu Panda: Legendary Warriors •Luxor 3 •Monkey Mischief: Party Time •Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor •Pet Pals Animal Doctor •Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World •WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009
PSP
Nintendo DS
Playstation 2
•Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 •WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009
PC
•Call of Duty: World at War •CSI: New York •History Channel Civil War: Secret Missions •Petz Horsez Club •Sacred 2: Fallen Angel •Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice •World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
•Amazing Adventures: Forgotten Ruins •Avatar - The Last Airbender: Into the Inferno •Call of Duty: World at War •futureU: The Prep Game for SAT •Guinness World Records: The Videogame •Hello Kitty Daily Kung Fu Panda: Legendary Warriors •My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr •National Geographic Panda •Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia •Pony Friends: Mini Breeds Edition •Populous •Sally's Salon •Six Flags Fun Park •Star Wars Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance •Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff •Tropix •Zoo Vet: Endangered Animals •Winx Club: Mission Enchantix •WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009
•Eternal Poison (It's a FATlus RPG, go nuts fanboys) •Hasbro Family Game Night •Onimusha: The Essentials (This is NEVER coming out) •Pop Star Guitar •Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 •Think Fast •WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009
One of the biggest games this week is Call of Duty: World at War, the first game in the popular series since last year's awesome Modern Warfare. This game takes the series back to its WW2 roots...and back to off-year developer Treyarch, two strikes against the game in the eyes of many fans of last year's Infinity Ward developed installment. However, don't be worried because I think the game looks great, especially since it keeps the same addictive multiplayer XP/perk system found in 4...AND BECAUSE IT HAS NAZI ZOMBIES! How can you say no to that?! Well, other than saying "I'm waiting for Left 4 Dead next week".
Next up is Mirror's Edge, the ambitious first person running game from BattleField developers, EA DICE. In case you've been living under a rock, Mirror's Edge is a first person game inspired by Parkour, or free running, in which you play as Faith, a messenger who is being pursued by the man. Based on the demo on PS3, I must say it's one of the best games I've played this year, and definitely the most original big-budget disc-based game of the year. Don't let IGN'sBSreviews fool you, Mirror's Edge is a game worth getting.
Of course the biggest game of the week is World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King, the latest expansion to the wildly popular MMORPG. I really don't know much about WoW except it steals your life and turns you into a fatass basement-dwelling neckbeard nerd. Needless to say, I've never played it, but I've seen what happens to friends that get into it, and it scares me off from playing...plus the game looks boring as heck.
Also out this week is Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts (the awesome N64 platformer is back...with little platforming and lots of vehicle building), Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (360 this time, in case you missed it on the PC), Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff (The classic is back...with no NFL license), Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia (moar Pokemans, hopefully moar mudkipz), and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (people like the Tales series from what I know...)
Honestly, I can't say much about this video without ruining it for you. So, just press play.
Japan never ceases to amaze me. This could rank in the top game advertisements of all-time with the Japanese ad for God Hand. Kudos SCEJ bringing us the best game related marketing rap since the infamous Zelda Rap (or All I Want For Xmas Is A PSP, take your pick).
Well, another season of treasure hunting and bargaining is now over (for the most part anyway). We went to a few garage sales this weekend and didn't find a single thing, and didn't even bother going to the flea market due to cold weather.
Looking back this season was a blast, found some awesome new treasures, met tons of people, and it even got me a staff position on the greatest website ever. It saddens me to think this season is over but after looking back at all the stuff I got, I think I'm ready to take a break from buying games and maybe spending a little more time actually playing them.
And now, a recap of the 2008 Treasure Hunting season with what I thought were my best finds. But, please, if something I bought really impressed you and I didn't put it on my list, feel free to leave a comment.
[img align=right]http://next08.be/sites/all/themes/next/logo.png[/img]Yesterday I went to Belgium's biggest gaming event called "Next". It was quite a big event with all the biggest publishers/developers present, as well as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. There were also some non-gaming brands present such as Samsung, Nikon, Apple, Bose, Philips, etc.... I had to go alone because none of my friends were willing to pay the 12 Euros admission. That obviously made things less fun but then I came up with the idea of shooting some photos of the event and sharing them with you guys.
I was about to post this in the Collection Diary, but it was getting kind of long and off topic for that, so I decided to make it a blog post instead.
Anyway, here's the situation: my parents had a "card party" last night, which included 4 of my cousins, two around the age of 10 and two closer to my age. Me and the older ones get along great and we were playing Guitar Hero III, but then the younger ones wanted to play also, and kept "trash talking" us saying they were better and we were playing too slow. So I hooked up a spare PS2 and another guitar with Guitar Hero II on another TV for them. They got bored with it after 5 minutes, and then wanted to play Duck Hunt, so I set up an NES with that. At this point I was tired of listening to them, so I left to play cards with everyone else, but every 5 minutes they were coming to me asking me if they could play the Wii. I told them "No" every time. So a few hours later I go back up to find the youngest playing World of Goo on my Wii
I don't mind them playing my games, as long as I set them up because I simply don't want them breaking something. It's bad enough when they're tripping over cords and stepping on guitars, but it really irks me when they go against my permission and start playing something I don't want them to.
It seems like every time they come over and play my games, I have bitter feelings about it. On one hand, I know they're just games and they're meant to be played, but on the other hand, they're mine and I don't like others going through them and playing whatever they want. To a very small degree, I have a similar feeling as when someone gets robbed, how they just feel violated that someone touched their stuff without permission.
And I think the worst part of it is, that they have no respect for not only other people's stuff, but for the games themselves. They see most of my collection as "old junk" and think it's worthless and don't care about it whatsoever. They just don't understand how a 20 something year old boxing game is worth more than their precious Rock Band.
So, now I'm thinking of banning them from my game room altogether. I don't really want to, but I really don't want something to break either.
Now, this wasn't supposed to be just a rant, I want to get your opinion on how other collectors feel about other people touching your stuff. So give the world your opinions on how you feel about friends/family members playing your collection.
As you probably know, RF Generation is a community consisting of gamers, collectors, and average Joes. We're quite proud of this fact, and proud of the fact since our inception on April 28, 2004 we've been an independent site for you guys, the community, and will continue to be a site for the community well into the future.
Of course, RF Generation's success has hinged a lot on contributions of our members, and the future of the site is no different. We didn't go from less around 15000 entries to over 42000 game and hardware entries by just the submissions of our staff alone. No, without the submissions of regular members like yourself we would not have gotten to the point where were are today. It's mind blowing to think that after almost 5 years we have that many entries in addition to almost 65000 images! We have an international audience, and our forum has almost 2000 members and over 120000 posts! Of the 1112 members that track their collections on our site, we have a tie ratio 274.9 games per collection! The 1112 collectors own over 305000 games! That's a huge number! Surely we are humbled by the success our site has achieved. It truly is a site for the community.
Look where we are. It's amazing to think where we might be in the future. The continued growth of the site though can't just happen with the submissions of our staff members. That is why we need YOU.
That's right, we need YOU. Start a blog, contribute stories. Scan your games and submit them to our database. Capture screenshots. Submit missing games and hardware. Add missing information. Have fun. Be social!
Our site remains vibrant and successful because of the submissions of people like you. With continued contributions by members like you well into the future, we will ensure that the site remains THE Classic and Modern Gaming Databases that it has been now for almost four and a half years. Do your part to make RF Generation the best independent gaming database that it has been for years. With your work and the contributions of other members just like you RF Generation will always be a website by the community for the community, and I'll always be proud of that.
So, will you contribute? We sure hope you will, and when you do I know that I as well as the entire community will be grateful that you did.
•History Channel Civil War: Secret Mission •James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace •Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa •Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm •Resistance 2 (Also available as a collector's edition) •Tom Clancy's End War •Valkyria Chronicles
•Gears of War 2 (Also available as a collector's edition) •History Channel Civil War: Secret Mission •James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace •Legendary •Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa •Namco Museum Virtual Arcade •Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice •Tom Clancy's End War
•Bratz Kidz: Slumber Party •James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace •Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa •Monster Lab •Movie Games (What?) •North American Hunting Extravaganza •Petz Sports (Sports totally should have ended with a z) •Pop Star Guitar •Rubik's World
PSP
Nintendo DS
Playstation 2
•Tom Clancy's End War
PC •CSI: New York •Guitar Hero III/Aerosmith Bundle James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace •Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa •Operation Mania •Petz Sports •Princess Pack •Realms of Arkania Trilogy •Space Trader
•Dora the Explorer: Dora Saves the Snow Princess •Dragonball: Origins •Exit DS •futureU: The Prep Game for SAT •Goosebumps HorrorLand •Guitar Rock Tour •Hello Kitty Daily •Imagine: Interior Designer •Imagine: Wedding Designer •Korg DS-10 •James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace •Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ •Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa •Monster Lab •My Baby Boy •My Baby Girl •Petz Dogz Pack •Pony Friends: Mini Breeds Edition •Princess on Ice •Real Soccer 2009 •Theresia (Holy shit, an M rated game on the DS!) •Tom Clancy's End War •Winx Club: Mission Enchantix (That's one x away from XXX) •Zoo Vet: Endangered Animals
•Call of Duty: World at War Final Fronts •Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World •History Channel Civil War:Secret Mission •James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace •Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa •Monster Lab •NHL 09 •Onimusha: The Essentials (I highly doubt it) •Pop Star Guitar •Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice •Think Fast
If you haven't joined the new age of gaming and don't like downloading games, you may want to check out Namco Museum Virtual Arcade since it includes many games available on the Xbox Live Arcade service on one disc including Galaga Legions, Pac-Man Championship Edition, Mr. Driller Online, Pac-Man, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Xevious, and New Rally-X. Achievement whores will be happy to know that all the XBLA games on the disc retain their achievement points, so you can further boost your e-penis. In addition to all those (mostly) excellent XBLA games, there's the usual cross-section of classic Namco games that you've come to expect from the Namco Museum series.
This week also sees the release of the latest James Bond game, Quantum of Solace. This looks pretty good because it is based on one of the best FPS engines out there, the Call of Duty 4 engine. Reviews, however, have been a mixed bag so far, so be cautious.
Next up is the the game of the year based on just the title, Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ for the DS. It's sort of a shmup with fairy tales and zombies. Surprisingly, it's getting good reviews on the interwebs. Plus, it's only $20, so what do you have to lose? NOTHING! That's the answer!
The most unique (and sure to be rare) release of the week is the Korg DS-10 synthesizer for the DS. In case you don't know what this is, it's a full-featured Korg synthesizer for only $35. Want to learn more? Watch it in action on the June 20th episode of the 1UP Show. Want to buy the game? Chances are you'll have to order it online because almost no retailers are carrying it, including GameStop.
Also out this week are two big name exclusive shooters: Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360 and Resistance 2 for the PS3. I'm not a Gears fan, so I'll spare you my thoughts on that game (actually, horde mode in that game looks hella fun), but I did try out the "beta" (aka demo) of Resistance 2 and had quite a fun time in both competitive and co-op modes. Haven't played the single player mode, but judging by how multiplayer is and how the first game was (and my Insomniac Games fanboyism), it should be awesome.
Rounding out the week is Valkyria Chronicles (Sega's incredible PS3 exclusive RPG/Third Person Shooter combo), Naruto Ultimate Ninja: Storm (BELIEVE IT!), and Tom Clancy's End War (an RTS that you can control entirely using your voice, which is actually pretty fun based on the demo).
Again, I am sooooooooooo sorry for how late this is and how it doesn't live up to my usual standards. Things got in the way Sunday and Monday, and then the election was last night. Hopefully you all forgive me enough to check back next time.
That looks really complicated to do, doesn't it? It's okay though, I only played sax, clarinet and recorder, and I don't think you can do anything like that on any of those instruments. Pure awesome? I think so.
It looks like the end of the season is over. I'm kind of happy that I can start sleeping in on the weekends and that I don't have to rearrange my game room to get stuff to fit each week, but of course I'm sad that I won't be getting many more games until Spring. Regardless of how I feel however, this season is dead. It was a very nice weekend with temperatures close to 70 but we only went to 4 garage sales all weekend long. The flea market was about half the size it usually is and there wasn't much. So here's my final finds for this season, this is last week as well as this week.
[10:33] TraderJake: hooray first day of daylight standard time! [10:33] Malygris: Yup. Whee. [10:34] * TraderJake hates DST [10:36] JamesF: you guys are behind the times [10:36] JamesF: DST was last week [10:36] Malygris: afk a bit [10:36] JamesF: maybe the week before, i forget [10:36] TraderJake: for you guys it was [10:36] TraderJake: but they kicked it back a week for for the children! [10:38] TraderJake: you know... halloween is big here in the states [10:39] TraderJake: speaking of which, have you crafted your guy fawkes effigy yet to be burned at the stake on wednesday? [10:40] JamesF: nah [10:40] JamesF: its too wet to bother celebrating anything [10:40] TraderJake: but bonfire night seems like such a fun holiday to celebrate [10:40] TraderJake: what could be more fun that burning things? [10:41] TraderJake: aside from plotting to blow up parliament, of course [10:41] JamesF: chavs using fireworks?
At #rfgeneration, we like to have interesting discussions. A lot of time they are random, and periodically they are related to gaming, or in James' case, letting the room know that he is going to go and listen to music in his Mini. See, it's truly a fun time, where we don't really have a set topic and things just go with the flow. So, that said, why aren't you in the chat with us? It's easy! #rfgeneration on quakenet is our location, and if that's too hard for you why not check out this page for the nitty gritty on joining. Won't you join us? JOIN US, WILL YOU?!
Poor Circuit City, relic of the Eighties. You had your streak of amazingly depressing dark stores and creepy atmosphere, but then Best Buy came along and now things are just terrible for you. You've tried really hard to rescue yourself from sinking ever farther into the abyss. Your new stores feel like in many ways of copy of old Best Buy stores. Always trying to catch nowadays, aren't you? Well, it sounds as though things are not going your way anymore.
Circuit City isn't exactly profitable anymore. Hemorrhaging money is a good way to describe their current situation. Let's just say it is bad, really bad. It's bad enough where investors are expecting a bankruptcy declaration next week, and the NYSE is ready to delist them. Well, that just seems bad, doesn't it. Well, it seems as though things are going to get much, much worse.
Sony, you know, the people that do the PlayStation 3 (nee PLAYSTATION 3), have decided to abort shipments to Circuit City distribution centers while the shipments were in transit. They are afraid that Circuit City will not be able to make payment on those shipments, so... no new Sony Shipments for Circuit City. So, if you need a big box store to buy your Sony crap from, might want to try Best Buy from now on.
Why is this such a big deal? Because apparently several companies are waiting for one company to stop shipments so that they as well can stop shipments. If that is truly the case, then the road to bankruptcy is coming to its destination very, very soon. Stay tuned to that! You might get some amazing deals!
Africa. The only thing I truly know about Africa is that it's far away and that apparently Leonardo DiCaprio once killed a small battalion of people there to save some guy who I only remember as "Black Solomon Grundy" and his son, ja ja? I'm proposing that this level of knowledge is universal as apparently Far Cry 2 is the most accurate depiction of Africa ever until Resident Evil 5 comes out. Note: Afrika for PS3 totally doesn't count. The K makes it a different continent.
Far Cry 2 is the, in name only, sequel to Ubisoft published Far Cry, which came out in 2004. The original has a lot of fond memories for me, I got it during my first year of college and it turns out to be good first person shooter with a pretty neat map creator. The first game followed over talkative protagonist Jack Carver as he explored some tropical islands filled with mercenaries and rejected Strogg from Quake 3. Game was pretty open ended in the ways you could approach strategy and was surprisingly really long. I almost wanna say that Far Cry is longer than the plane ride to Africa. The other neat thing was that the mercenary AI was actually pretty decent. They'd call out for help, reinforcements, use cover, patrol the island, etc. Basically, they weren't your average retarded opponent and could cause real trouble on the harder difficulties. Overall, I'd say if you want a good first person shooter for your PC, to still check it out. You can probably find it for super cheap, so there's no excuse not to pick it up if the genre interests you.
The OH NOOOO! Otter is concerned! See, the OH NOOOO! Otter has a side thing he likes to do when he isn't the OH NOOOO! Otter on this here website. It turns out that Mr. Otter is a mischief maker on EA's official forums. You might call him a troll, but hey, every forum has their troll, and well, we tend to ban them. I really don't know why Mr. Otter find it's necessary to be such a not so nice member on EA's official forum. It might be because EA has historically been an evil corporation. It could just be that he is a truly malicious person. But, EA is really getting sick of his and others antics, and they are going to raise the stakes in getting banned.
See, most forums just ban you from the site. That's what we do, and I imagine other sites do that as well. But see, EA decided to be truly malicious in banning. EA happens to use a wonderful piece of DRM known as SecuROM, which causes its games to call home periodically. Additionally, these new games all have an EA ID that spans across games. Well, EA has decided to tie your game EA ID to your forum ID. Big deal, right? Well, it is.
See, if you get banned on the forum now you're going to get locked out of your games, and well, that would truly suck. You paid for the games, so shouldn't you be able to play the games even if you get banned from some measly official forum? Well, EA doesn't think so. So yeah, play nice kids, and Mr. Otter, do be careful now. You never know when EA might lock you out of your games.
UPDATE: A Red Alert 3 Mod was lying. Way to represent the corporate behemoth! Turns out this was false.
This announcement, if true, would be a HUUUUUUGE blow to Activision's Guitar Hero, since The Beatles are the best selling artist of all time. I think those of you expecting this to be a downloadable song pack for $20 or $30 are completely wrong. This is going to be MUCH bigger than that. I expect to see a full-priced game comprised of all the songs off of The Beatles' 1 greatest hits compilation, and possibly album packs as downloadable content.
So, what's your take? Would you buy Rock Band: The Beatles as a full-priced game? I know a lot of people, maybe including myself, sure as hell would. Hopefully this opens the door to The Gray Album being in Rock Band...Nahhh.
Update: Stephen Totilo of MTV's excellent Multiplayer Blog has confirmed that there is a Beatles game in development at Harmonix. It is not a Rock Band expansion, but rather a totally new game built from the ground up. Nothing else is known about the game, other than it will be out next holiday season.
One of the biggest games this week is Call of Duty: World at War, the first game in the popular series since last year's awesome Modern Warfare. This game takes the series back to its WW2 roots...and back to off-year developer Treyarch, two strikes against the game in the eyes of many fans of last year's Infinity Ward developed installment. However, don't be worried because I think the game looks great, especially since it keeps the same addictive multiplayer XP/perk system found in 4...
As you probably know, RF Generation is a community consisting of gamers, collectors, and average Joes. We're quite proud of this fact, and proud of the fact since our inception on April 28, 2004 we've been an independent site for you guys, the community, and will continue to be a site for the community well into the future.
If you haven't joined the new age of gaming and don't like downloading games, you may want to check out Namco Museum Virtual Arcade since it includes many games available on the Xbox Live Arcade service on one disc including Galaga Legions, Pac-Man Championship Edition, Mr. Driller Online, Pac-Man, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Xevious, and New Rally-X. 
The OH NOOOO! Otter is concerned! See, the OH NOOOO! Otter has a side thing he likes to do when he isn't the OH NOOOO! Otter on this here website. It turns out that Mr. Otter is a mischief maker on EA's official forums. You might call him a troll, but hey, every forum has their troll, and well, we tend to ban them. I really don't know why Mr. Otter find it's necessary to be such a not so nice member on EA's official forum. It might be because EA has historically been an evil corporation. It could just be that he is a truly malicious person. But, EA is really getting sick of his and others antics, and they are going to raise the stakes in getting banned.
Yup, time to put Guitar Hero to rest because the Wall Street Journal reports that 
