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**image courtesy of Thumbs & Ammo**
It's nice to see that all of that Thanksgiving turkey didn't cause our submitters and approvers to fall asleep on the job in November. I'm once again excited to report that we had another fantastic month of submissions at RF Generation. With last month's impressive 6,174 submissions, I thought we might slow down, but I'm happy to announce that our members knocked it out of the park once again with 6,686 submissions! The submissions for November included 6,375 game submissions (4,187 of which were images) and 311 hardware submissions. We had another great effort from our international members and this month there we lots of members who contributed over 50 submissions. Top contributors for the month of November include:
Continue reading RF Generation Thanks: November 2015
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Once every few years, I've been able to attend local gaming events. Four years ago, I was able to compete in a small King of Fighters XIII tournament. Several years prior to that, I was able to compete in a few local Guitar Hero III events. Outside of that, it's been a wasteland for local gaming events up here. With our new location, we've been able to schedule video gaming events much more frequently and have been building our competitive communities. But none of this is on the scale to which I've been craving for years.
After our bylaw issues last year, it was very interesting to see that I could use my platform of Game Quest to reach a fair-sized audience of local gamers. So with some help from friends and the community in general, I've been working to bring about the largest scale competitive video game event that my city has ever seen. Beyond just having a cool gaming event, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to show our wider community that gamers can be great citizens and break some of the stigmas that surround gamers at the same time.
Continue reading Blog Quest: It's For The Children
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As the time counter in my Fallout 4 game crosses from 23 hours 59 minutes to 1 day, I'm examining why huge games like this one might scare people off and what we can do in order to play them.
Continue reading The Case for Huge Games
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Like some of you, when I was a kid, I distinctly remember seeing all of the ads on television for the Nintendo Entertainment System and several of its games. Each time they came on, I was filled with excitement and longed for the day when I would own a square, gray box of my own. It wasn't until my grandparents' Christmas gift of a faulty telescope in 1987, that I was able to turn "misfortune" into gaming gold with the help of my older cousin and via the Customer Service Department at Brendle's. My parents were not pleased, but somehow my crafty maneuver paid off and I was able to keep it. And so began, not only my love for the NES, but a kind of gaming resourcefulness that would last a lifetime.
Enter 2015, a 38-year old gamer with a wife, two kids (another on the way), a new dog, a mortgage, and the same zest for gaming since he gave up the ability to look at the stars. Though unable to peer into space, several years ago, instead I began filling space with a collection that now consists of approximately 2,585 games across 35+ systems, and a great deal of accessories and controllers. Collecting has become a hobby and being able to now own systems and games I could only dream of during my very humble childhood and share them with my friends and family gives me great joy. As I've gotten older and earned greater responsibility, money has to be disbursed through various necessary channels and the appeal of buying new systems and games with my disposable income has greatly waned. Some might call this being "cheap," but that's really not the case at all. For me, there are various reasons why I choose to wait to purchase systems and typically stay a generation (and sometimes two generations behind).
Continue reading Why Wait?: A Collector's Guide to Patience
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The first Virtua Cop is a true light gun classic, and you can read why in my review of it here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...views-Virtua-Cop-3041.php. It reset the standard for excellence, and brought the genre into the 3rd dimension all at the same time. It was inevitable for there to be a follow up. Virtua Cop 2 was released for the arcade in 1995 by AM2 at Sega. A port to the Sega Saturn was released the following year, with another port for PC in 1997, and even a Japan exclusive individual Dreamcast release in 2000. This version was packaged with 11 other games on the Sega Smash Pack for North American release.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Virtua Cop 2
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This months article was to feature my plodding (and hopefully, exhaustive) journey through the first three Ultima games, which are generally referred to as "The Age of Darkness." But you know what? Despite my undaunted love for sometimes crusty, old-school RPG games, I find the older Ultima games intimidating and unapproachable, so much so that I had this puppy on the back burner for nearly a year. Well, now is the time for action, I say. So with fully configured and patched downloads from GoG imported into DBGL on my MacBook, I pushed forth to see just what all the hubbub is about.
Continue reading A Brief Tour of Ultima: Part One - The Age of Darkness
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Pic Source: technologytell.com
It wasn't very long ago that the only hope to get some gaming in during the holidays involved a Game Boy and any time you could snag away from relatives. Then the Wii came along, followed by smart phone apps, and now 'non-gamers' are about as common as folks who 'don't watch movies/listen to music'. That being said, there's a huge gap between Angry Birds Go! and Fallout 4, and that divide may make it feel as if there's still no games that everyone can enjoy, now that Wii Sports has worn thin.
Au Contraire, mon ami! There are many many many great suggestions, depending what you have kicking at home of course. Given how many collectors hang around RFG, you may already have some of these, but many can be found at reasonable prices (with some exceptions!) and have the potential to become annual favorites. In fact, there's a good chance a few are old favorites already, and just need to be dusted off and popped in again. Keep in mind, the following suggestions are based off of two key criteria; playing in a group (generally multiplayer, sometimes score challenge) and ease-of-play (Helldivers is a house favorite, but rather 'hardcore' in challenge and not catered to 'pick-up-and-play.')
So without further ado, if you have these respective systems kicking around, why not fire 'em up and play:
Continue reading Gaming And Holidays; What To Play When Those NonGamers Are Over
[img width=320 height=319]http://www.portallos.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/box-tennis.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from GameFAQs.
2 out of 5 Game Boy launch titles were sports games.
I'm not sure what that says about Nintendo, but it does
make me wonder why every platform got so many.
So this is Tennis, the final of 5 launch titles for the Nintendo Game Boy. The 2nd of 2 sports titles in the launch line-up, Nintendo of America must really have been banking on the popularity of sports games, because the launch line-up included 2 games, much like the Japanese launch included Yakuman, a mahjong game. In the same way that every video game console ever released in Japan has likely seen a mahjong game (or thirty), every game system ever released in North America is generally peppered with sports titles throughout the console's life span. The Game Boy was no exception, and it received both Baseball and Tennis.
Continue reading Tennis, 1989
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Strap on your ammo belt, grab your unlimited clips, clean your bazooka, and get ready for some sweet Run n' Gun action with the boys from the RFGen Playcast! As you know, each December we typically pick a few games to play with members of the community for a high score challenge. Two years ago, we played through the Streets of Rage series, which our own Disposed Hero came out on top of, and last year, MetalFRO was our Top Shmuper as he dominated many of the shooters we choose. This December, we have chosen the Run n' Gun genre for our playthrough and will be holding weekly high score competitions for the following games: Contra (NES), Rolling Thunder 2 (Genesis), and Metal Slug 3 (XBox and various compilations). Official rules and sign-ups here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=16039.0
Continue reading Community Playthrough Announcement: December 2015
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It has been a long and interesting process. I learned a lot and I am very happy with the final product. Let me show you how I put all of the pieces together
Continue reading Arcade Control Panel Design Part IV: The Final Countdown
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This past Christmas, I was fortunate enough to get a copy of Ready Player One from the wife as one of my gifts. She’s always been good with gift-giving and I attribute this to her knowing me pretty well after being together for 19 years, and a little thing I like to call an Amazon Wishlist (if you don’t have a Wishlist and share it with your loved ones, I highly suggest it). Anyway, I’ve had the book for 10 months now, I’ve picked it up and put it down several times and it wasn’t until recently (during my travels to RWX and a subsequent beach vacation) that I settled in and gave it a go. You see, I’m kind of what you would call an opportunistic reader. I read when a good opportunity presents itself and those opportunities are typically when I’m not around my kids or when I’m on a nice warm beach…..so yeah, pretty few and far between. It’s not that I don’t love to read, I use to do it all of the time, but a busy adult life and being heavily force-fed a lot of “classics” I didn’t want to read in grad school kind of sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me. Again, I still love to read, it’s just that I’m a lot pickier about what I choose to dive into these days.
Ready Player One sat near the top of my stack for those 10 months, and did so due to strong recommendations from site members and a New York Times reviewer’s blurb on the cover which reads, “Willie Wonka meets The Matrix.” (The Huffington Post’s “The grown-up’s Harry Potter,” not so much a draw for me.) Was the New York Times right? Well, in a way. Mr. Cline takes great liberty in borrowing pieces of 70’s and 80’s nostalgia to craft a story which tugs at the core of his reader and unlocks images from the deep recesses of our childhood memories. You see, Ready Player One is more than a book, it’s a love letter—one directed at the late 30 and 40+ year old dinosaurs who grew up during the infancy of video games and helped cultivate what we now so lovingly refer to as “geek culture.” However, to limit the book to a specific audience is not only unfair, but inaccurate. Any lover of science fiction, apocalyptic landscapes, high-tech gadgets, action, and even romance, will appreciate and enjoy this book. However, it doesn’t hurt to have a good working knowledge of, or at least a healthy interest in, early video games and 80’s culture.
Continue reading Banana's Rotten Reviews: Ready Player One
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This may be the first game that lets me truly use the name of this review series. Persona 4 is a turn based RPG that was originally released late in the life of the Playstation 2. This game was developed and published by Atlus, and was released in the West in 2008. The game's commercial success, especially internationally, has lead to Atlus releasing an updated version with extra content on Sony's Playstation Vita, Persona 4: Golden. Spinoffs of this Shin Megami Tensei spinoff are all over the place now. Arc System Works developed the fighting games Persona 4: Arena and Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax for Japanese arcades, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. The Vita recently saw the release of the newest spinoff, a rhythm game called Persona 4: Dancing All Night.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Persona 4
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Join RFGeneration Playcast hosts, Rich (singlebanana), Shawn (GrayGhost81), and Steven (Disposed Hero) as we discuss October's retro and modern playthroughs. On the retro side, Rich and Steven discuss Sega's only U.S. Castlevania release, Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis. During the modern segment, Shawn and Steven discuss the first installment of the most popular survival horror series of all time, Resident Evil. We hope you enjoy our spooky show and please leave us some feedback on our discussion thread.
Episode 19 discussion thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=16029.0
Get the show on Podbean: http://rfgenplaycast.podbean.com/
On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/...ion-playcast/id1038953364
On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/w...iLsEbcV4&feature=youtu.be
On Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/p...ation-playcast?refid=stpr
And follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rfgenplaythroughs
And Twitter: https://twitter.com/RFGPlayCast
Continue reading Episode 19 - RF Generation Playcast
[img width=360 height=344]http://img1.game-oldies.com/sites/default/files/packshots/nintendo-game-boy/radar-mission-usa-europe.png[/img] Image shamelessly linked from Game Oldies. Once again, I find myself in awe of late 80's,
early 90's box art. The cool fonts, the excellent, hand-drawn artwork,
and blatant overstatement of the actual product. Ah, nostalgia.
I love playing games. I love video games, of course, because, if I didn't, writing this blog would be pretty silly of me, wouldn't it? But I also love other kinds of games, because I grew up playing board games and card games with my family. I can rock a game of Klondike Solitaire any time, and I rather enjoy trouncing my family in a rousing game of Scatergories. Yes, I love a good tabletop game. So do a lot of other people, I'd wager, which is why we see so many conversions of popular card, board, and other tabletop games onto video game systems. The Game Boy was no exception to this, and received a number of relevant titles.
Radar Mission, on paper, is the very definition of taking a board game and turning into a video game with enough added content, feature/functionality, and substance, to make it worth playing over and above the source material it shamelessly copies. In this case, it's the venerable classic Battleship. Yes, the game that invented the catch phrase, "You sank my battleship!" that nearly every North American child in my generation could pull out of the air. During almost any commercial break for after-school programming, or Saturday Morning Cartoons (RIP), a commercial for some iteration of the game was inevitably aired. However, the difference with Battleship was that many versions of the game came with more than just plastic pegs, plastic ships, and a nice custom game board. Some versions came with lights, sounds, and gripping nautical warfare action! Okay, so maybe I'm channeling the commercials from memory, but the truth is, as a property to translate to the video game medium, Battleship had already transcended its pressed cardboard and plastic game piece brethren, and was therefore going to need more than just pictures on the screen and cutesy music to spruce it up.
Continue reading Radar Mission, 1990
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I'm am sad to report that October saw a "enormous" drop in submissions from our high watermark in September. In September, there were a total of 6,480 submissions and all that we could seem to muster for October was a mere 6,174 submissions........... But seriously, you guys RAWKED it! Thanks for another fantastic month of submissions! It's really nice to see the information on the site grow and especially on the international front. The submissions for October included 5,983 game submissions (3,861 of which were images) and 191 hardware submissions. Top contributors for the month of October include:
Our top submitters (those with a minimum of 50) for October were:
FatherJack 4,042
Schlibby 799
Sauza12 385
Shadow Kisuragi 219
Raidou 84
Kam1Kaz3 NL77 76
BJoin79 67
raffa185 64
Thanks for another great month!
Top approvers for the month included:
Shadow Kisuragi 970
Tynstar 152
Flee 31
Great work all, please keep those submissions coming! Thanks to everyone who submitted or approved submissions this month. Have a great November!
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