I've been inspired, over the last few months, to play more video games. I assume my participation in the RF Generation Community Playthrough through the year has been a bit of an indication, at least in part. I would hope my articles through the year have signaled that, as well. One thing I haven't been spectacular at over the years is time management. As a more task-oriented person, I tend to focus on one thing, and then move on to another. But with anything in life, setting goals is important to getting ahead. As many games as I own at this point, I have more than I'll realistically ever really play through. But at least I can make some plans on how to begin evening the odds.
I decided I would take a different spin on my Halloween post this year and resurrect a dormant RF Generation topic that looks at the wonderful world of video game music. As we all know, music can play a vital role in setting the tone and atmosphere of a game, just as with movies and TV shows. And few genres are more enhanced by a quality soundscape than horror.
That said, as I was compiling the list of games below, I started to realize that most horror-themed games have soundtracks that are more orchestral and ambient in nature (Dead Space, Alien: Isolation, and Resident Evil VII are three recent examples that come to mind). Interestingly, a lot of the tracks I consider effectively creepy are from games that aren't particularly focused on being scary. But that doesn't mean they can't have a similar effect. Take a look at my list below, and let me know if there are any scary tracks from games that come to mind for you.
When we think of good games to play during the Halloween season, typically anything with a general horror theme comes to mind as a good fit for the holiday. Truth be told, there aren't many games that are specifically about Halloween, so if you wanted something tailor-made for the holiday, pickings are slim. However, the two Costume Quest games are the exact opposite, not at all scary but focused specifically on Halloween. Having played and enjoyed the first Costume Quest many years ago, I have always wanted to play the sequel and finally made it happen this October.
When it comes to classic survival horror games, there is no other developer with the same pedigree as Capcom. They arguably invented the entire genre with the Famicom movie licensed game Sweet Home back in 1989. In 1995 Capcom would publish Clock Tower for the Super Famicom, with the series being developed by Human Entertainment. Its sequel, Clock Tower 2 would later be released internationally by ASCII; who would soon rebrand themselves as Agetec, as just Clock Tower. The international releases of the second and third Clock Towers followed the absolute explosion of the popularity of horror games, but would not be able to ride that wave themselves.
eBay is one of the most classic and storied mainstream sites in internet history. Launching in 1995, the site has gone through many changes and evolutions to become the massive presence it is today. I recently discovered that my eBay account is turning twenty years old this month, so I'd like to take a trip down memory lane with my history of using eBay, starting all the way back with my first purchase of an item that I still own to this day.
Origins My first eBay purchase was this two pack of McFarlane Metal Gear Solid action figures in October of 2000. I'm not a toy collector and never have been, but I'm a Metal Gear Solid fanatic to this day. I still have these figures and will continue to hold onto them even though they will remain forever sealed in this fishbowl and even though Snake looks a bit like Ricky Martin for some reason. I don't remember too much about my other transactions this far back in the past, but it's wild to consider that this purchase was made when I was still living with my parents. I would imagine I purchased some actual video games around this time as well, but I didn't consider myself a collector back then. It is very likely that I used eBay around this time to fuel my other passion, music.
It is interesting when I reflect on action movies; once a perpetual staple of the entertainment diet of my youth, as I got older I wasn't as interested in them as much. Ditto the buddy-cop genre; I have fun with a good movie but over the last couple of decades I enjoy a video game version much more. Given my affinity towards co-op gaming in general it is a natural fit, and one of my recently discovered favorites is Door Kickers: Action Squad.
Posted on Oct 16th 2020 at 12:00:00 PM by (Pam) Posted under review, video, NES
I'm always interested in the later release NES games. Wacky Races came out in 1991 and was based on the Hanna Barbera cartoon of the same name. It's interesting in that it includes no actual races. It's a solid enough, but rather mediocre platformer.
Released in 1977, the Atari 2600 library featured hundreds of titles, both 1st party and 3rd party. But it was also notorius for it's lack of quality control, which contributed to the video game market crashing in the early 80's. That doesn't tell the whole story, as there were many fun and memorable experiences to be had on the system, with several games inspiring whole genres in future game generations.
So what were some of the best the system had to offer? We had six participants weigh in, with some very interesting results.
In Episode 027, Addicted and MetalFRO pick apart a Japanese doujin title that borrows heavily from Taito's RayForce, as well as its sequels. Siter Skain's Kamui originally released in 1999, and hit Steam 15 years later. Does is blatant plagiarism detract from the game's own original elements? And is this game fun? Listen to the episode, and we get into all of that, and more!
We interrupt your regularly scheduled repetitious typing of "All work and no play makes (insert your name here) a dull boy/girl to bring you the October 2020 edition of RF Generation's Site News! In this issue, we announce our sequelicious November Community Playthrough game, reveal our shoot 'em up club title, and of course, thank those members who sent in submissions to our site and registered approvals last month. Thanks for keeping it on Channel 3 and please continue to keep you and your loved ones SAFE!
REMEMBER: If you have any news about upcoming events or topics that you think the site needs to hear about, please PM singlebanana and put "RFG Site News" in the subject line. Who knows, maybe your news will make our front page!
One of the things that I've been thinking about lately is variety. As the saying goes, "Variety is the spice of life." As I've gotten older, and have less time to game than I used to, I want to make sure that I'm still having new experiences, and not getting stuck in a rut. Being a podcast host, focusing on a single genre, it would be easy for me to fall into the rote exercise of playing that one type of game, and make my gaming life pretty shallow. Thankfully, I haven't (yet) succumbed to such a fate.
One way to alleviate that potential fate is to jump into mobile gaming. Already, some have stopped reading after the last sentence, but I don't mean you should play terrible phone games. What I mean is, do something different. I don't play a lot of mobile games, but I enjoy the occasional match-3 type of game. It exercises my brain differently than the types of games I play on console or PC. I also play Words With Friends, to help continue to develop my vocabulary, and I often fire up some version of Solitaire on my phone, when I only have 5 or 10 minutes to play, and don't otherwise have access to something else. Besides that, Solitaire makes a great distraction while you're sitting on the throne, so to speak.
Posted on Oct 6th 2020 at 12:00:00 PM by (russlyman) Posted under 90s stores
Department stores that have been forgotten to the past and closed down. Lots of these department stores and retail outlets have lots of fond memories for us adults now. Growing up and going to some of these stores like Circuit City, Toys R Us, Caldor, and more, bring back a different time. Now that they no longer exist we cherish these memories of browsing their aisle stacked with toys, video games, board games and much more!
The rumors have been swirling for what feels like years now about Amazon getting into the video game space. It's one of the few, if not only, areas of content delivery they have yet to tackle. This past week it finally happened. They're calling the service Luna, and like Google's Stadia, it's a cloud-based gaming service. We're close to a year out from Stadia's shaky launch and mere weeks since Microsoft's Game Pass cloud gaming (formerly X-Cloud) rolled out to Android phones. So how does Luna compare, and more importantly, will it learn from Google's mistakes?
Everybody is back for this episode so we talk about our favorite Mario games, why he's so important to each of us and why Chris is wrong for not liking any of the 3D Mario games.
