Travis4

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

Web developer and all-around geek.
https://travisnewman.me

547 Posts

The Analogue Pocket Wants My $200, Will Probably Get It
https://i.imgur.com/CPv6SrP.png
Analogue, creators of various retro goodness, have announced their next offering: the Analogue Pocket.

Out of the box, the Analogue Pocket can play all the original run of Gameboy and Gameboy Color games, and has an audio sequencer as well.

With some adapters, you can also play other handheld titles from the Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, and Atari Lynx.

Taking a note from the PSP and the Nintendo Switch, you'll also be able to buy a separate dock that connects to your TV and USB/Bluetooth controllers for playing your portable games in a non-portable fashion, if that's your thing.

This isn't a portable emulator-- Analogue have engineered their own chips to play these games. And ... just look at it. That's a beautiful piece of hardware.

I'm going to spend the time between now and when this releases trying to tell myself that I don't need it.

https://www.analogue.co/pocket/

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 68: Sayonara Dragon Link
We love to check in every month or so about what we've been playing and watching. It had been a while, though, so we devoted almost the entire episode to it! And we check in on Jon's playthrough of Link's Awakening on the Switch to see how he liked the end.

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 67: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening For Nintendo Switch
We've returned to Koholint Island after 26 years for this review of the new Nintendo Switch remake of The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening. This is one of our most anticipated games in a while, and we're stoked to finally have our hands on it. Warning: this one gets surprisingly philosophical for a few minutes, and may be worth a listen just for that.

The Sega Genesis Mini Review: GENESIS DOES WHAT NINTENDID BUT MAYBE BETTER
The Sega Genesis Mini has been out for a few days, and I've put in some time with it. I'm impressed. This is not a cheap AtGames device that will languish in the bottom of some drawer. This is a solid device with damn fine emulation, and a feature set to compete with the current trend of minis.

Just looking at the Genesis Mini itself tells you a lot about the care that went into the production. The expansion port cover comes off and the headphone volume slider slides, just like on the original. This serves no functional purpose, but it's meticulous little details that show that Sega is taking this seriously, even if they aren't taking themselves serious in the process (they released a "tower of power" package that you can buy to put a sega cd, 32x, and game cartridge on your Genesis Mini, which do nothing functional but poke fun at the old tower of power joke).

When you first boot up, you are presented with a region selection screen as you'd expect, but you can come back to this at any time to change your region. And you should. This is the one killer feature in my mind-- the games installed on the Genesis Mini have various regions included. If you change to Japan, for instance, you can get the far superior version of Contra: Hard Corps.

But after that you get to the list of games, presented in a nice grid of box art (which also changes based on your region). You can sort this list alphabetically or by release date. This menu's music is so great, I had to look it up. It's brand new music composed by Yuzo Koshiro, the composer of Streets of Rage, and it even uses the Genesis audio hardware to be more accurate to the time.

When you get into one of the system's 42 games, many of the staple features these mini systems are known for are at your fingertips. You can hold start to get the save state menu, and go back to the game list (thankfully), but one omission here is the rewind feature made popular by Nintendo's offerings.

The same kind of picture options you'd expect are here, 4:3 or 16:9, scanlines, etc. As I did with the NES and SNES Classic, I just left those options at the default so that it looks closest to what I remember.

As for the games? Well, that's up to you. There are plenty to choose from, double the amount on the SNES Classic (exactly double, in fact) and there are some incredible titles in here. One highlight is Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which was an exclusive to Sega's dial-in online service back in the day, but is now available to everyone here. And like top 10 lists, some people will hate what was included, some will love them. There are some strange omissions, but the games included here are generally fantastic, and there's something for everyone who isn't a sports fan at least (NHL 94 dominated the Genesis and isn't included here? For shame!)

My only complaints are...

  • I love the games on this thing, but there are a few glaring omissions. But I don't envy the people who had to put this together, and I've had this complaint about every mini so far.

  • The lack of rewind, but with save states that isn't a requirement, though it would have been nice.

  • The lack of 6-button controllers. At least this is fixable with a separate purchase, but Street Fighter II for instance is a mess with 3-button controllers. Playable, but much less comfortably.



It's $80, which isn't cheap, but if you like the games included this is a no-brainer. Everything from the design of the Mini itself to the software choices and the tight emulation shows a real attention to detail, and wins over Nintendo in some key ways, to a point where I'd say it's the better device. I certainly wouldn't bet on this game list vs the SNES Classic, even if they do win in quantity, but the loving detail to every facet of the presentation is quite nice to see.

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 66: Stranger Things 3
In this episode of Cheerful Ghost Radio, we're visiting

uʍoᗡ ǝpısd∩ ǝɥ⊥

As we review Netflix's Stranger Things 3!

Cheerful Ghost Radio Now On Spotify!
https://i.imgur.com/vmpJcSI.png
We want you to be able to listen to Cheerful Ghost Radio on whichever platform you choose, so today we're happy to share that Cheerful Ghost Radio is now on Spotify!

Spotify used to have a more curated podcast section and was a bit exclusive, but they are trying to make Spotify the go-to for podcast listening and have changed things up. We're happy to add Spotify to our growing list of services. It's one more step on our path to WORLD DOMINATI.... I mean one more way to make our listeners happy! Yep, that's what I meant.

Have a listen at the link below, and as always, let us know if your favorite podcast source doesn't have Cheerful Ghost Radio and we will work to get it there.

https://open.spotify.com/show/44EXCqrSPKxPfgEhzor6OT?si=lcK0bCS4RnumhF8w0enrrQ

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 65: Spider-Man Far From Home
In this episode, we've all returned from the snap and wondering what the heck has happened over the past five years, as we review Spider-Man: Far From Home!

The Latest Final Fantasy VII Remake Trailer Is Gorgeous
I mean just look at it.

Wow, this is hard. I am trying not to get overhyped but the more we see of the FFVII remake, the harder that gets.

In this trailer, we get a glimpse of a few of the mini games, and more battle footage. But mostly, it’s just showing off how pretty everything is. And boy is it ever.

Graphics aren’t everything, you have to have gameplay to keep it interesting. We haven’t seen a lot of that. But even if the gameplay isn’t fun, this might like one of those movies that’s just pure schlock but worth buying because of the visuals.

This has been a day-one buy for me ever since the rumors started circulating like the year the PS3 came out. Before I bought a PS3, I said I would buy a PS3 for this game. I drooled over that tech demo Square did for a Sony presentation and hoped every year that we’d get more info.

It took a while, but shockingly we are only six months away. The hype is real, no matter how hard I try to suppress it.

Wear Your Love For Cheerful Ghost and Tale of the White Wyvern On Your Sleeve... Literally!
https://i.imgur.com/x4Z5d7J.png
You want some swag? Who doesn't want swag? We've just launched the Cheerful Ghost Zazzle shop, where you can get shirts and mugs for Tale of the White Wyvern.

We have two Tale mugs to choose from-- one black text on a white mug, and the other with the full purple/teal/fuchsia color scheme you know and love from the game. We call this the "Janky AF Version" because, the way the Zazzle printing works... it looks a little janky. But we love it and hope you do too.

As for Tale shirts, you can choose the classic black shirt with white text, a black shirt with white/teal/fuchsia text, or the super special purple shirt with white/teal/fuchsia text!

We gave you some options here because these shirts are a bit pricey and we wanted to provide some options. The only shirt Zazzle had available with the right color to match our Tale Purple (we're trying to get Crayola to make that an official color) was the American Apparel shirt, which makes the price jump significantly.

We know these on-demand clothing shops are all a little pricey, so we are taking the lowest possible percentage. We'll make around $1.50 per shirt, so if 8 or 10 of our active users want to buy around.... oh, twenty thousand of these shirts, we can quit our jobs and do this full time!

Seriously though, this is a no-risk way to gauge interest in official swag, so let us know what you think about the items we have up, and what else you might want to see. Zazzle has an intimidating number of products available, so if you want Cheerful Ghost napkins or Tale of the White Wyvern coasters, let us know.

You can find our shop by hitting the shopping cart icon in our nav above, following the link from the membership page, or following this link.

https://www.zazzle.com/store/cheerful_ghost?rf=238477436852498752&tc=238477436852498752

If you haven't played Tale of the White Wyvern yet, head over to https://thewhitewyvern.com/ now to play for free!

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 64: Super Mario Maker 2
We've built a new episode of Cheerful Ghost Radio and we can't wait for you to play it. In this episode we review Super Mario Maker 2 on the Nintendo Switch!