Well. Here’s a post I never expected to be making.

There’s a new version of Starcraft out right now, that’s been entirely tooned. The new art is done by Carbot, who has gained fame for some pretty hilarious animations based on Blizzard games.


StarCraft: Cartooned re-imagines every unit, structure, map, menu, and mission with the beloved art style of Carbot Animations. Add a whole new look to the epic single player campaign, take the cartooned mayhem online and go head-to-head on the multiplayer ladder, or join your friends for your favorite custom game – even if they don’t own StarCraft: Cartooned!


I love that Blizzard is still giving the original Starcraft some love, and this looks like a fun way to play it.

https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/23053097

The rumors about a new Switch version were true! In September, the Switch Lite will be released.

This new model lives up to its name in many ways

• It’s light on price, $100 cheaper.


• It’s light on features, as it’s portable only, with no TV output.


• It’s light on screen real estate, having a slightly smaller screen.


• It’s lighter in the literal sense, around 25% weight reduction.


• And it’s lighter on battery use, as all these add up to less of a power drain.

This sounds like a perfect entry to the Switch family, an entry level system for people who only want to play it on the go, and don’t want to pay $300.

While I don’t do a lot of portable gaming, I could see myself eventually picking up one of these just for some of the local, multi-Switch multiplayer games.

So what do you think? If you already have a Switch, do you want this? If you don’t, is this an enticing entry to Switch gaming?

See the full specs here : https://www.nintendo.com/switch/compare/

Nintendo's next mobile game, Dr. Mario World, released today!

It's an interesting spin on Dr. Mario, but the premise is still the same. There are germs on the screen that you have to get rid of. You use pills that match the color of the germs to remove them. I somehow doubt the medical accuracy, but it's a fun puzzle game.

Edit: This mini review you’re about to read was written too early. Be sure you read the very end.

I played through 20 levels and it's... pretty good so far. I will keep using it as a time waster but I'm not blown away.

I have a problem with the touch controls but it's honestly partially on me. You can place the pills anywhere on the board and they'll float upwards. Since you can place them anywhere, why wait? Just put them where you want right? But you can also move them laterally or up, BUT NOT DOWN, while they're out on the board. So what keeps happening to me is, I can't properly see it under my thumb and I put it in the wrong place. About 5 times that's required a restart to even finish the level because it seems like the first few moves are often necessary to get right.

And another problem is a problem I've had with nearly every mobile game. It seems like the majority of your time playing is watching the level loading screens and the success screens because you can't tap to skip through.

A new mechanic that I'm mixed on is choosing your doctor. After a few levels you can choose between Mario, Peach, and Bowser, and each come with their own special power. Which ever one you choose, you're locked in unless you unlock the others (and also non-starter doctors) purely randomly by using the in-game currency. It's a loot box system to unlock characters, and those are always a fan favorite. But as far as I can tell, there aren't any requirements on using different ones, so this doesn't exactly screw up your gameplay but it's something to note.

BUT at its core it still has the Dr. Mario mechanics and premise, with some modern puzzle game mechanics to flesh it out, and that's still fun, usually. But I don't feel a strong drive to play a ton of it. This is a 10 minutes a day kind of game. And honestly that may be a good thing. It doesn't feel like it has the same addictive loop that games like Two Dots and such have. And with Two Dots and basically every other free-to-play cash machine, they had progression halting mechanics that you had to either wait or pay to get through to capitalize on that addictive loop. Edit: Welp. That was a nice thought anyway

So far, I haven't seen anything that could halt your progress like that, however I somewhat expect there to be some powerups that are just *barely* not required to progress. You can buy these powerups with coins you collect in game, but then you have the quandary of grinding the hell out of them or paying real money.

At any rate, this is a much kinder free-to-play model than what you may be used to with other puzzle games, and it's a fun game to fill some time here and there. Twenty levels seems like a lot but it's only a drop in the bucket for what's available, so I don't know how the game might change, but it's definitely worth downloading and trying out.

Edit: Well, they got me. I didn’t notice the heart counter. I ended up on a level in the mid-20s that was giving me some trouble and suddenly I couldn’t play without waiting 30 minutes or paying real money. This is just the same free-to-play-on-our-schedule-unless-you-pay puzzle formula with some Dr. Mario mechanics and a Mushroom Kingdom coat of paint. You may have read my posts or comments here before about this kind of mechanic: when I see a pay or wait blocker, I uninstall. So I have.

Please Nintendo, and other mobile game developers, give me an option to throw you five bucks and not have this stuff happen. I love you and I’ll keep playing Mario Run (yep, I still fire that up occasionally), but this is a big miss for me.

In this episode, we're talking all about the classic NES game from Tecmo, Ninja Gaiden. This game has fueled many controller-throwing fits for people of all ages through the years, and has stayed popular with multiple sequels and different series.

Terraria, the game that we can’t get enough of on Cheerful Ghost, has achieved one more step toward their goal of being available on every system. This time, it’s the Nintendo Switch!

This isn’t the Journey’s End update, and in fact isn’t even up to date with the PC version, it’s the same as the other console versions which are still a couple updates behind, pending some work porting the new changes over.

If you haven’t picked this up, this might be a good time for it. One thing to note is that the price, $29.99, is a little steep compared to the PC version which is $9.99 normally, but is currently on sale for $4.99.

Generally speaking, PC is probably the way to go for Terraria, but if you want Terraria that you can play on your couch and on the go, this is the version for you!

And we're back for part 2! If you loved our E3 discussion yesterday, you're in luck because we have another hour of it! This episode is all about the presentations from Microsoft, Bethesda, and Nintendo, and the new info we got about Google Stadia's game streaming service.

If you liked hearing our discussion on these, and want some text discussions too, check out our coverage on Cheerful Ghost!

Microsoft: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4098/e3-2019-day-1-microsoft

Bethesda: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4099/e3-2019-day-1-bethesda

Nintendo: https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/4104/e3-2019-the-nintendo-wrap-up

And check out the official site for Stadia: https://store.google.com/us/product/stadia_founders_edition?hl=en-US

This is the episode so nice, we did it twice! This is part 1 of our E3 discussion-- we ran about two hours and are splitting it up for your listening pleasure. In part 1, we discuss Cyberpunk 2077, Terraria Journey's End, Limited Run Games, Final Fantasy VII, and Jedi Fallen Order.

Come back tomorrow for part 2, where we'll be discussing the presentations from Microsoft, Bethesda, Nintendo, and Google!

For more information on what we talked about in part 1, check out our coverage on Cheerful Ghost:

Microsoft's presentation, including Cyberpunk 2077: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4098/e3-2019-day-1-microsoft

Terraria Journey's End: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4101/terraria-journey-s-end-update-will-release-this-year

Limited Run Games: https://cheerfulghost.com/Will_Ball/posts/4103/e3-2019-day-1-limited-run-games

Final Fantasy VII: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4102/the-final-fantasy-vii-remake-releases-march-3-2020

Jedi Fallen Order and the rest of the EA presentation: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4097/e3-2019-day-0-ea

And a wrap up of some of our favorite things from E3: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4107/e3-2019-wrap-up-what-were-your-favorites

On May 19th of this year The Phantom Menace celebrated it’s 20th anniversary so we got together to record this bombad, okeeday celebration Podcast!

Jon, Tim, and Travis are back as always, but as a special treat, our friends Rett and Taylor from Game Dev's Quest joined us to reflect on Episode I, what it means to us, and how its perception has changed over time.

And stick around to find out how well we do at discerning Star Wars character names from actual human diseases!

Game Dev's Quest is an awesome podcast about game development, and you should go listen to that now. Well... Listen to this episode and *then* go listen to Game Dev's Quest.

https://gamedevsquest.com/

If you were paying attention on Cheerful Ghost this week, you saw my posts about the big presentations up to Sunday, and then only scattered info from there on. Yeah, sorry about that everyone. I had planned to do my usual summaries from each of the big conferences but I got knocked out by a bad case of strep throat.

But I've caught up on the news, and rather than suddenly dropping a ton of posts, I'm just going to share a few highlights. I picked the Engadget video embedded above for this post because it hits a lot of the high points for the general public, even if they aren't all my highlights.

These aren't in any particular order except the first two:

BREATH OF THE MOTHER F*&@% WILD SEQUEL
No, we didn't get a ton here. Just a very brief look at a cinematic from the game with a couple hints at what the plot might be. But just knowing it's coming is the highlight of E3 for me. BotW is one of my favorite games of all time, and *may* be my favorite Zelda game. So I'm a little hyped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fr1Z07AV00

Link's Awakening Remake
Note however that I said BotW "may" be my favorite Zelda game. It's between that and Link's Awakening on Gameboy Color. And the new gameplay we got for this remake in the Treehouse was just what I was hoping for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHwhTv-LdPY

Mario Maker 2
The Treehouse also brought us some in-depth Mario Maker 2 gameplay and I didn't think I could be any more excited for this, but here we are. This is only part 1, I recommend you check out part 2 and 3 as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMxmq3bhSuw

I started with my Nintendo highlights because I think they stole the show this year. Can't wait to put my Switch into heavy use.

Jedi Fallen Order
Stig Asmussen (from the God of War series) directing a Star Wars single-player action game is basically a dream come true. We got to see a lot of gameplay here, and it looks tight. If I'm being honest with myself, some of it looks a little familiar to recent action games, but the addition of a light saber and force powers knocks the game up quite a few notches for me.
https://youtu.be/8939aURV9Dc

Cyberpunk 2077
There's so much depth to this game that it seems as though you could play it for a year and still not uncover every possibility. It looks like it blends Blade Runner and the Deus Ex series, which is a match made in heaven. This game was already high on my list for anticipated releases, but this made it jump near the top. And let's be honest, I said Nintendo stole the show, but Keanu Reeves stole the show when he showed up on stage after it was revealed that he's playing a character in the game. He always seems like such a wholesome dude and his brief appearance was charming as ever. Never change, Keanu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwgrsjHlqas

Doom Eternal
After the first trailer Bethesda showed for this at E3, I was a little disappointed. It didn't seem to add anything. But they went on to show some gameplay and adding interesting traversal of the environment to the game looks to elevate this game far past the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK73XMgkpc8

Terraria: Journey's End
Ah, the update we've been waiting forever for will be the last major update. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. This game has given us way more than we paid into it over the years. I've already covered this in depth here:
https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4101/terraria-journey-s-end-update-will-release-this-year

Final Fantasy VII Remake
We finally have a release date! It'll be here next March:
https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4102/the-final-fantasy-vii-remake-releases-march-3-2020

Gods and Monsters
To be fair this is a "wait and see" for me, but it has piqued my interest. It looks ... SO MUCH like Breath of the Wild that I had to check that I hadn't created it in a fever dream. But it seems like Ubisoft is trying to capture that Breath of the Wild magic, and if they can, I'll play it.
https://youtu.be/Egzb6_HCqQw

Marvel's Avengers
OK this is something of a problem for me. I really want to experience playing as all these characters. The premise and graphics look great, even if we haven't seen any gameplay of it. It's a bit nebulous. BUT. They designed this so closely to the aesthetics of the MCU but the face designs and voices are so very different that it goes so far beyond pulling me out of the experience of the trailer. This is still one I really want to keep an eye on but I wish they'd given their game its own voice like Spider-Man on the PS4 did. It pulled inspiration from everything, but was unique.
https://youtu.be/LDBojdBAjXU

Your turn!
This is just a fraction of what was covered. What were your highlights? Drop them in the comments and lets geek out over the new games we get to play soon!

To catch up on the rest of our E3 disussions:

EA: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4097/e3-2019-day-0-ea

Microsoft: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4098/e3-2019-day-1-microsoft

Bethesda: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/4099/e3-2019-day-1-bethesda

Will's excellent Limited Run coverage, highlighting something I would have missed otherwise: https://cheerfulghost.com/Will_Ball/posts/4103/e3-2019-day-1-limited-run-games

Nintendo: https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/4104/e3-2019-the-nintendo-wrap-up

I had planned to roll this into my Square Enix roundup post but I'm way under the weather today so that may be later and I wanted to get it out there.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake will be with us on March 3, 2020, exclusively on PS4.

We are sure to get more at the Square Enix presentation, but a trailer was shown at Square Enix's recent Final Fantasy concert.

This looks shiny, and I can't wait. This has been on my radar since rumors started years ago. You may remember, in our predictions for 2019 episode of Cheerful Ghost Radio, I jokingly predicted that we would learn nothing about the remake this year, hoping that reverse psychology would take hold and they'd give us some details. And so they have!

There are a few dozen amazing reasons to own a PS4, and this may be another one. I'm tempering my expectations for now, but I'm excited to learn more.