[img width=320 height=286]http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/1/4/0/21140_front.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from GameFAQs.
I love classic video game box art like this. It symbolizes
the imagination many artists put into the artwork. Imagination
that unfortunately, rarely ever captured the true look and
feel of the game. Still, it gave us hope of the contents within.
One of the video game genres that I've been a big fan of over the last 20 years or so is shoot-em-ups. No, I'm not talking about "shooters", those fast-paced, first-person games where you brandish a firearm of some sort and snipe guys at 300 feet, reveling in every headshot. I'm talking about the scrolling shooter, one of the staples of what we now know as classic, or "retro" gaming. You see, from the early-mid 1980's, until around the mid-late 1990's, the scrolling shooter genre evolved tremendously, from humble beginnings like 1942, Vulgus, Star Force, and the like, to highly sophisticated games with deep, complex scoring systems like Battle Garegga, Dodonpachi, Radiant Silvergun, and many more. While I appreciate the complexity and replayability of games like that, give me a simple "shmup" (a term, coined by Zzap!64 Magazine) with twitchy game play, a simple control scheme, and solid action any day. While there's room in my heart for "danmaku" games (aka bullet curtain, or "bullet hell" shooters), I generally prefer classic shoot-em-ups to their more grown-up descendants.
Continue reading Solar Striker, 1990
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As I write this, I'm sitting in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport on a 3 hour layover. I've been up since 4:45am after going to bed some time around 2am.
Totally worth it!
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As I write this, I am sitting in from of my computer "zombified" after having stood in front of my office scanner for 2+ hours as it gobbled page after countless page as I watched the multicolored LEDs flicker across the display. I would have gone mad by now if it weren't for the sheer joy that awaits me on the horizon when I punch that clock at the end of the day. That's right friends, by the time you read this, I will have flown to Connecticut, gone to RWX, and will probably still be sleeping after a long night of gaming with some other radical dudes who attended the convention this year. But right now I'm simply tired, beaten down, disheveled, tired, and did I mention I was tired? Speaking of "tireless" efforts, look no further than the submissions for the month of September!
Last last month, we increased our July effort of 5,272 submissions, to 5,867 submissions! That's awesome right, how could we possible top that number.....well, we did. In September, there were a total of 6,480 submissions!!! Once again, this is a monsterous feat and we appreciate all of you who contributed to this effort. The submissions for September included 6,363 game submissions (4,342 of which were images) and 117 hardware submissions. Top contributors for the month of August include:
Our top submitters (those with a minimum of 100) for August were:
FatherJack 5,009 (Really, you just had to tack on 9 more...)
Schlibby 400 (Fantastic work again!!)
Nintoad 312 (another impressive contribution!)
Sauza12 171 (ole reliable Suaza, nice work!)
Thanks for another great month guys!!!
Top approvers for the month included:
Shadow Kisuragi 886
Tynstar 161
Flee 84
Great work all, please keep those submissions coming! Thanks to everyone who submitted or approved submissions this month. Have a great October!
[img width=700 height=206]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8808/18226401432_7817d9640b_k.jpg[/img]
We've all heard that old chestnut at one point or another during our lives: "It takes a village to raise a Game Store". I've learned firsthand how true that is over the last couple years though.....
Continue reading Blog Quest: The Crew
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OK, get ready for a long entry. I had originally planned for this to be a 4 or 5 part series but it's been kicked into high gear to get it complete by the time the RFGen crew descends upon me for the RetroWorld Expo. A lot of details to go over, a lot of assembly, a lot of art. Time to settle down for the never ending control panel assembly.
Continue reading Arcade Control Panel Design Part II
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Posted on Sep 28th 2015 at 12:00:00 PM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under SNK, arcade, neo geo, psp, ps2, wii, playstation, playstation 2, playstation portable, shooter, run and gun |
[img width=401 height=600]http://i.imgur.com/7GH7dI0.jpg[/img]
Metal Slug is an arcade run and gun shooter developed by Nazca Corporation. The team behind Nazca likely started in the early 1990s, when they were an internal team for Irem. In 1994, Irem imploded as a result of extremely weak sales. The wholesale division for arcades became Apies, and with the development group behind Nazca going independent, all Irem had left was a team of video game developers for consoles. In 1996, Nazca released two games for SNK's Neo Geo MVS arcade unit, Neo Turf Masters and Metal Slug. After a stellar sales performance, SNK bought Nazca outright.
SNK was in a precarious position at the time they acquired Nazca, they were busy at work on a fully 3D arcade board, which ended up being the Hyper Neo Geo 64. This upgrade was meant to help SNK produce high budget and top quality 3D arcade games. They were years behind their competitors in this market, and the system did not have any early hits. Their older series, the original Neo Geo MVS, remained the standard for the company, because of later released, fast-paced and fun 2D arcade games like Metal Slug.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Metal Slug
[img width=640 height=400]http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c394/bombatomba77/rcr_000_zpsyy11zyyb.png[/img]
DOS is dead. Well, about as dead as the Latin language, meaning that while it is still used today for many things, nothing new has been done in quite a while. Searching for DOS on Google will net you a ton of abandonware sites instead of indie projects. Ask your friends and they will wax nostalgic about their favorite games (perhaps many of them not even DOS games). But there is a completed project, believe it or not, and it has recently been released as a physical, limited release game. Yep. A port, no less, of an already successful indie game that has seen physical boxes on the PS4 and PS Vita as well. The name, you ask? It's Retro City Rampage 486.
Continue reading Retro City Rampage 486 Edition
[img width=485 height=339]http://www.quickmeme.com/img/2b/2b8b6c9c65234e874cbfc3a71900d151ba52d744489459a0a7da55816f0e8ab3.jpg[/img]
Good thing it told me. Source: Jeremysaid.com
Let's be honest here for a minute. You WHAT? I'm... sorry, I think I have to call the police.
Er, let's start over. If we're truly honest about it, people tend to be pretty picky, and that includes gamers being picky about their games. And that's fine! After all, we're dedicating our most valuable resource; time, and usually at least some of our income toward a leisure activity. It only makes sense that we are discerning about how and what we play, and cater our playtime to match our preferences, as we do most other things.
Continue reading Good Thing My Bias is the Right One
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Posted on Sep 22nd 2015 at 12:00:00 PM by ( noiseredux) Posted under PC |
[img width=496 height=440]http://hcbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/laptop-on-beach.jpg[/img]
Some of you may have noticed that I took a bit of a hiatus away from writing here for the past couple months. Mostly I just needed a break from deadlines for a bit. The Summer months can certainly get busy between yard work, vacation, beach days, and BBQ's. So I mean, there's good busy in there, but busy none the less. I did however get some gaming done as well, so I thought I'd take a look back at some of the stuff I found myself really into recently.
Continue reading What I Played On My Summer Vacation
I was originally going to write a blog entry on iOS retro ports. The problem is that retro ports on iOS are universally pretty terrible. Games made to be played with a joystick, D-pad, or keyboard simply don't convert well to the touch screen.
Some games, however, do work very well on iOS. Puzzle games in particular flourish on iOS, for the same reason they do on the DS; the touch screen is well-suited for the genre, allowing you to manipulate puzzle pieces or the puzzle board in a direct, intuitive manner. The impreciseness that sometimes comes with controlling a touchscreen with your finger can be frustrating in more action-oriented titles, but many puzzle games are much more forgiving of this device flaw.
Unfortunately, on the app store the success of one puzzle game will inevitably be followed by 50 sub-par clones. The iOS store is so overrun with puzzle games that it can be difficult to find one worth playing. Need help sorting through the masses? Here are a few of my favorites:
Continue reading iOS Puzzle Games
Collectorcast Episode 35: It's My Home
Episode 35 discussion thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...rum/index.php?topic=15948
While Bil is off welcoming the birth of his new son, Crabby and Duke get together to do a show on their own. Of course there are a lot of your questions to answer, and then we discuss the upcoming Retro VGS and it's associated Kickstarter. Are we excited to jump in? Is there a viable business model behind it? Listen in to find out what we think.
Get the show at http://www.collectorcast.com
Follow the Collectorcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Collectorcast
Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Collectorcast
On Stitcher (enter Promo Code RFGeneration): http://www.stitcher.com/RFGeneration
On iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/u...collectorcast/id524246060
On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/Collectorcast
Show Notes
Music: Street Fighter II - Championship Edition (PCE)
Q & A - 9:45
Topic - 56:53
Outro - 1:57:05
[img width=610 height=343]http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/o736/Fleach/castlevania%20res%20evil_zpssrpvfpzh.png[/img]
What October would be complete without horror themed playthroughs on the retro and modern side? Over the years, we've played some fun and exciting titles including Alan Wake and Fragile Dreams on the modern side and two installments of the Castlevania series on the retro side, Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night. Next month on the modern playthrough, we delve into another popular franchise with Resident Evil, which for content purposes, the GC/Wii versions will be played by the hosts. Those wishing to play the original on the PSX are still encouraged to play along, but please note that you may miss out on parts of the discussion and may not be able to abide by the same checkpoints. On the retro side, we return to the Castlevania series once again with our playthrough of Castlvania: Bloodlines. This game is an oddity in that it was the only Castlevania game produced solely for a Sega console. Does it hold up to the rest of the series? Let's find out together!
Continue reading Community Playthrough Announcement: October 2015
[img width=700 height=525]http://i.imgur.com/wGpyYLJ.jpg[/img]
If you remember my Shadowrun Returns review, you might be wondering why I've skipped reviewing Dragonfall to do the latest game in the series. That's a sad tale that goes back to when Dragonfall was just an expansion tied to the original Returns. Dragonfall received a Director's Cut update where it became its own title, and the ties between the original were severed. When this happened, I lost all of my saves. Putting these files in the cloud may have prevented this, but I was unaware this would be an issue before the event happened, and don't trust the cloud in general. I've started another play, and I'm a bit over halfway to where I was, but Hong Kong came out and was fresh. It was not content I've already blasted through before, so the allure to play it was much stronger.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Shadowrun: Hong Kong
[img width=700 height=525]http://i.imgur.com/uoPzhr0.jpg[/img]
We have talked about some of the things you should do when you first pick up a cabinet and we have talked a little bit about monitors and working on them. Now we are going to talk about the control panel ("CP"). There are lots of important decisions that go into designing them and if you are only going to have one or 2 machines, you had better make the CP count.
Continue reading Arcade Control Panel Design Part I
Here at RF Generation, I've become very comfortable with the group of relatively active members on the forums, and have enjoyed reading all the various blog posts and articles that come out most every day. I'm not a big reader, so I count it a plus that I can snack on these bite-size morsels of text to get a little bit of a vicarious gaming fix. Sometimes I take them in while on a short break at work or in the evening as I wind down for the day, when I have only a few minutes to spare before heading to dreamland and not enough time to ACTUALLY play a game. It is with some anticipation that I look forward to new articles on the site, and am checking every 2 or 3 days to see who has new blog posts, and what new information said posts may hold for me. Truth be told, I've become a minor addict to the RF Generation blogs.
Having said that, I have found a number of articles to be very informative and inspirational. In particular, I found a recent article by RF Generation member 'slackur' to be very inspirational. He wrote about culling a large collection of games, but in a purposeful manner, in hopes of sharing that collection with friends, family, and coworkers, as a means of extending the life of those games, and to keep many of them from languishing on the shelves. Indeed, it made me long for the days of early adulthood, when I lived in a bigger city, and could easily find a half dozen people within a stone's throw who would want to come over and play video games with me. Where do the years go? But, I digress. In my more aged state, I find myself in a small town, surrounded by farmers and ranchers whose gaming experiences are all but a thing of the past. I'm a relatively lone gamer in a sea of non-gamers.
Continue reading Family Gaming Night!
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