Cheerful Ghost Blog

The Great Ben Prunty Album Giveaway!

If you love spaceship simulation roguelikes then you’ve played FTL and a big part of what that makes that game amazing is it’s fantastic score by Indie game composer extraordinaire Ben Prunty. Ben has written many other great albums and if you haven’t heard them yet you’re in luck because you can enter Giveaways for 5 of his latest albums: Deep Space Deluxe, Fragments, StarCrawlers, Dead Secret and Cipher! Ben was nice enough to gift us 3 keys for each album so make sure to send him some love on Twitter and check out his Twitch channel where every Saturday at 2pm PST/10pm UTC he makes electronic music live and answers your questions!

https://twitter.com/benprunty/
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The 2016 Cheerful Ghost Game of the Year Award Winners!

I want to thank everyone that voted in this years 2016 Cheerful Ghost Game of the Year Awards. This year Scrypt made us a cool "I Voted" image linked above that you should checkout, print out and stick on your wall if you voted.

This years winners are a very unique mix I am really happy with. I am not sure most sites would have made the choices we all did which is one of the reasons why I think our awards are different.

Triple A Game of the Year: Doom

Runner Up: Overwatch

Indie Game of the Year: No Man's Sky

Runner Up: Stardew Valley

DLC/Update of the Year: No Man's Sky Foundation Update

Runner Up: Hearthstone Whispers of the Old Gods

Mobile Game of the Year: Pokemon Go

Runner... Read All

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/02/2017 at 08:51pm

I only picked winners! :) And yes, I agree that's a great graphic by scrypt!

Travis Admin wrote on 01/03/2017 at 03:30am

I voted for Super Mario Run for the best mobile game. While it has problems (incredibly frustrating ones) I find it to be very fun. Pokemon Go also has problems, probably even bigger ones, but it deserves the win. It had a huge impact.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/03/2017 at 05:04am

I voted for Pokemon Go because I finally have an Android smartphone, which means I can finally play it! :)

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/03/2017 at 07:46am

I'd like to offer some observations. As for our small beloved group, I think NMS is our game of the year. Remember when many of us were blowing up the event's comments section and we had to switch to two forum posts? I think we talked more about NMS in 2016 than any other game and there were many of us involved in that. I am glad that we did not succumb to, promote, or expand the negativity it received from what seems to be a lot of other gamers. I'm not saying we called it a perfect game, but we still enjoyed it (and still do).

I also am thinking about the games that I saw most played by my Steam friends. There are very few of them (friends and games). Many of my friends (I'd say about 4 of them) played a lot of Ark, as I did, too. I also saw one or two playing Rocket League often. One of my friends also played Overwatch a bit, which isn't a Steam game, but you know we can add non-Steam games to our Steam library.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give those observations. I would invite anyone else to give their observations as well.

Travis Admin wrote on 01/03/2017 at 05:17pm

I wouldn't call it our game of the year exactly but it's definitely our most discussed. Much of that was due to how newsworthy it was.

A lot of that negativity was warranted. But like everything on the internet, people took it waaaaaay too far.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/03/2017 at 07:23pm

I think the thing is that I didn't know anything about NMS until it came out. Then I realized we had an event going on about it and I read what was posted there and looked at some of the links that were posted as well. Then I decided to jump on the NMS bandwagon and join the event. I think many other people had heard about the game much earlier than I did and were actively following the news of it. So, their expectation of it was much higher than mine. Therefore, I was not as disappointed as they were. Granted, I still have in mind that one quote I read some that it was "as big as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle." I thought that analogy was fitting, until the Foundation update was released. Then, that "ocean" got much "deeper" and the game got much better. I still have things to do with it. I only stopped playing recently to get into Ark's holiday event. Since Ark has updated, I have more to do with it. Then, I might go back to NMS and continue what I was doing. The game can still get a bit dull after awhile, especially if you decide to try to locate all the creatures on a planet to get that discovery bonus. That part is still sometimes difficult. I'd like to see something, perhaps a scanner upgrade, that helps you locate the various creatures more easily.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 01/03/2017 at 07:23pm

It's nice to see NMS win something somewhere ;)

Travis Admin wrote on 01/03/2017 at 07:30pm

What scrypt said! Lol

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Happy New Year!

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I hope everyone has a great New Year in 2017! 2016 was rough for many and my sincere hope is 2017 is much better.

As people are waking up from their celebration festivities what are you all doing? Traditionally I have friends over on New Years and we hang out and watch films and this time we'll be watching the Star Wars cartoon The Great Heep and then Star Wars Rogue 2 to see how well it pairs to the recent Rogue One movie.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Heep

Happy Holidays To All!

I want to wish everyone a very Happy Holdays and I hope you spend it with amazing people. Some of us will be opening some presents from Santa so if you get anything particularly noteworthy feel free to share it in the comments.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 12/25/2016 at 05:29am

I reacted the same way when I got my N64 for christmas, but I was 20.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 12/25/2016 at 05:32pm

I got the NES Classic! (It's super fun, but I'm just impressed my wife found one!)

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 12/25/2016 at 09:28pm

Awesome Adam!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/26/2016 at 01:12am

Damn lucky Adam.

The main fun stuff I got was the new 3DS and a few movies like The Hateful Eight and Star Trek Beyond. The new Metallica album and the Breakfast Club on Bluray. Can't wait to watch Bender smoke it up in HD!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/26/2016 at 02:09am

The new 3DS also doesn't come with a charger. I remember something about that a while ago. I guess it works with the old ones and they don't include it. Not expensive but annoying as it's my first DS.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 02:17am

Yeah the new 3DS no charger is lame.

I got a PS4 slim with uncharted 4.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 04:19am

Lucky guys! Gaming wise I got a $30 Gamestop gift card, which I'm thinking of taking to Gamestop and buying $30 in Steam gift cards. LOL Gaming wise, my son got an ocarina from his mom! He also got a Skylanders thing, but it's for XB1/360 (which we don't have), so it's going to get returned for something else.

Oh and as for the N64, I remember that Christmas when I got mine. I got enough money for Christmas that I went to Wal-Mart and bought one. It was sometime around or after high school (which ended in '98 for me). I still have it!

Travis Admin wrote on 12/26/2016 at 07:14am

That's super lame that the 3DS doesn't come with a charger, since it's a proprietary connector.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 07:21am

@Travis, I agree. I read about that issue and forgot about it. Since I have already paid for a 3DS and 2 3DS XLs, I already have more than one charger for the 3DS family, so that mattered little to me. I seem to remember reading that they did that to reduce the cost of the system (which is currently about $200), although it seems like a charger would be only a slight cost and not including one just seems like a stupid idea.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 04:19pm

I forgot about the charger too! I already had a charger, so I didn't think much of it. I would have rather paid a few more dollars for a bundled in charger than not having one. Think of all the poor kids (and Jon) that get one as a present and then can't use it due to not having a charger. Sometimes I just don't understand Nintendo.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 04:22pm

Did you get any 3DS games Jon?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/26/2016 at 05:49pm

Besides immediately going to Amazon for a charger I also bought Ocarina of Time 3D and Yoshis New Island. I already got a few old DS games like New Super Mario Brothers from Goodwill and that's a really fun game.

I will get the Link Between Worlds and a few others st some point too.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/26/2016 at 05:50pm

Also there are a ton of demos for the 3DS which should keep me occupied for awhile. Demos, remember those?

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 06:51pm

Yeah! I know Nintendo has demos, because I've downloaded some of them from their online store. I haven't played OoT 3D, but I bet it's pretty sweet (as the original and other ports are). I have Link Between Worlds, or at least I bought the golden Triforce 3DS XL that came with it. Well it was really a code I had to enter to get it downloaded from the store.

Jon, did you get the New 3DS XL or just the New 3DS? Apparently that "New" model you got has better hardware. I was told that the Hyrule Warriors game for the 3DS doesn't play well on the original system, but works fine on the "New" model.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/26/2016 at 07:28pm

The New 3DS so not the XL and it was a Black Friday special for $99, so a pretty good deal.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 12/26/2016 at 07:29pm

Man, "Nintendo hard" is a real thing! These games are fun, but I kinda feel like I'm banging my head against a wall when playing them lol. I am determined to play through Zelda II, but it's really slow going! (Zelda II is a super smooth game though. The controls feel really good)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/26/2016 at 08:01pm

What have you played so far? Zelda 2 is really rough. I've never beat it myself.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 12/26/2016 at 08:33pm

OMG Zelda 2 is freaking hard. I never was able to figure it out when I played it on the NES. I finally found another way to play it (many years later) with cheats and then looked up what I was supposed to do. I really don't know about that game, it's perhaps one of the most mind boggling games I can think of!

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 12/27/2016 at 05:23pm

So far my favorite games are Zelda 2 and Final Fantasy. I've played (and loved) FF 2, 3 and 7, but never played the first. It appears it's going to be a long grind (I made my 4 person team to be, 1 black magic, 1 white magic and 2 fighters. I really had no idea what I was doing, but it seems to work) as my team is going to need to level up A LOT before even going through the first dungeon/castle. But I love the sounds! It's kind of a "duh" now, but the FF sounds originated in the original! I was pleasantly surprised to find this out :)

I've tried out most of the other games, and my wife laughs at me when I play for 1 minute, the feels impossible, and I press Resart and go to a different game :)

Travis Admin wrote on 12/27/2016 at 05:37pm

Which ones feel impossible Adam? "Nintendo hard" is definitely a thing :D

Travis Admin wrote on 12/27/2016 at 05:47pm

Please note: I'm not asking so I can say HAHA YOU SUCK I'm interested in hearing which ones, as an adult, feel impossible. Our interpretation of difficulty has changed since the 80s. I think we were more willing to grind something really hard when we had all the time in the world and only like 15 games to choose from.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 12/27/2016 at 06:43pm

Don't worry, my wife already says that to me, all the time...
Looking back at the list, the only game that feels *impossible* is Super C. The controls feel bad for Ice Climber and Kid Icarus. I might not bother playing those again. I get Galaga and Gradius mixed up, but both were too difficult to put much effort in. Ghosts'N Goblins and Megan Man 2 felt really hard, but beatable (I got through a couple Mega man levels before getting interested in trying something else). Both Castlevania games seemed fun, but didn't keep my attention. I'll come back to those at some point. Kirby and Tecmo Bowl were way too easy, I stopped playing them quickly after starting but will probably pick them up at some point when I'm bored. Zelda 2 is super hard, but fun enough to keep trying. Final Fantasy is grinds, but I'm giving it time.

So I guess the only *impossible* game is Super C :)

Travis Admin wrote on 12/28/2016 at 04:40am

Kid Icarus is one of my faves, clunky controls and all. I can see why you might lump it in with that (tangentially)

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 12/28/2016 at 05:08pm

I need a Game Genie Classic now ;)

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Watch All The Talks From Steam Developer Days 2016

I was able to attend this years Steam Developer Days and had a great time. One big draw of the conference was the talks and Valve has dropped them all on their YouTube page. I linked to one really great talk above by Mike Ambinder on the Psychology of Games I recommend you watch. There are 25 talks available from this years Dev Days so if you are in need of some awesome game talks and have some time, hit the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckFgM6dUP2ihiMeKHoyIdHvhRSyqwQsp

If you want to read my thoughts on my two days at Steam Developer Days hit the links below.

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Portland Retro Game Expo 2016 - VHS, a Broken NES & The Retron 3

Portland Retro Game Expo is a mecca for retro game lovers. This year we had a booth a the convention and ran four NES speedrun and score tournaments. Packie was the overall tournament master by winning two of our contests starting with his blistering 2 minute 04 second Super Mario Brothers 1-4 speedrun. Packie then ended the convention by absolutely demolishing our Dr. Mario score tournament with a score of 334,400! His Dr Mario ability was incredible and i've never really seen anything like his setup and execution of combos. Ben won Papers, Please on Steam for his 1 minute 26 second speedrun of Super Mario Brothers 3 to the first Toad House. Philly won our RC Pro AM... Read All Portland Retro Game Expo is a mecca for retro game lovers. This year we had a booth a the convention and ran four NES speedrun and score tournaments. Packie was the overall tournament master by winning two of our contests starting with his blistering 2 minute 04 second Super Mario Brothers 1-4 speedrun. Packie then ended the convention by absolutely demolishing our Dr. Mario score tournament with a score of 334,400! His Dr Mario ability was incredible and i've never really seen anything like his setup and execution of combos. Ben won Papers, Please on Steam for his 1 minute 26 second speedrun of Super Mario Brothers 3 to the first Toad House. Philly won our RC Pro AM score tournament with a incredible final score of 18,658! I want to thank everyone that took part in our contests as each was unique to watch and some were won on the edge of a knife, or in this case a controller.

As Adam and I were preparing for our booth this year we identified early on that we wanted to run a few NES tournaments and I realized that the best way to do that was to get an old CRT TV. After looking at some options I decided that getting a TV/VCR combo seemed like the coolest option as I haven't owned a VCR in well more than a decade. As I scoured the local Goodwill and other second hand stores I also noticed how cheap VHS films were and that it might be fun to start a small collection. Between each tournament we played a couple VHS films such as Tron and Back to the Future and people seemed to really like that. Besides showing a few films between our tournaments I also had a few movies out on the table I was showing and more than a couple times people seemed interested in buying them. I didn't know there was even a small market for VHS films but I suppose a retro game convention would be the place to pick them up if you wanted to.

After our first NES tournament my childhood NES we were running the tournaments on stopped working. I was really upset as this NES had been with me since I got it for Christmas from my Grandparents back in the early 90's. Having your NES break at a retro game convention is pretty fortunate but I wasn't ready to pull the trigger on getting a new one quite yet but we had to continue the tournaments. In the end I decided on picking up a Retron 3 and that worked out really well. The Retron 3 not only plays NES games but it also accepts SNES and Genesis carts. We continued our NES tournaments without a hitch and I was surprised at how incredible the Retron worked with my existing NES games and controllers. After the convention was over I set it up with the TV in my office and played some of the games I picked up at the convention such as Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam on Genesis. Apparently Sega Genesis games are much cheaper than the SNES counterparts because collectors seem to prefer the Super Nintendo. Whereas I think the Super Nintendo does indeed have better colors and sound the Genesis ports of games are extremely solid and I have been having a blast playing Mortal Kombat on it. So much so that I plan on doing a formal review in the upcoming weeks on what I think of the game and my thoughts on the Genesis port.

I want to thank everyone that checked out the booth at this years Portland Retro Game Expo and hopefully we will be able to do it next year. We are already planning on attending and have some ideas on how to make it better but if you have ideas, i'd love to hear them.

If you are interested in seeing more of the convention you can hit the link on some pictures I took in an imgur album below:

http://imgur.com/a/YwFQk

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 11/02/2016 at 06:01am

That sounds awesome! Well, except that your NES failed you. I hope it's not dead. Nintendo used to have places you could take it for repairs, up until a few (or more) years ago that is. I never heard of the Retron 3, but it sounds amazing! I have an extremely small library of NES and SNES carts. I know exactly where my NES is (I think I got it around 13 years ago, maybe more), but I have no idea what happened to the SNES I had.

This event sounds and even looks totally awesome. I can imagine majorly geeking out there!

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 11/02/2016 at 03:04pm

This was such a great experience. I've gone to the expo for the past few years as just an attendee, but when Jon asked if I could help out at the booth, I jumped at the chance.

This is such a great convention as there's so much to do and everyone is incredibly friendly. People really do come from all over the country, so everyone had an interesting perspective.

The game competitions we ran blew me away. The combos Packers was pulling out on Dr. Mario... I honestly thought he was messing up, until he started nailing multiple-stage combos (he'd clear 8-10 viruses at a time... I can't adequately describe how much it blew my mind). The speed running competitions we're amazing as well. The precision some players had was astounding. I think I learned a thing or two, but would need to practice forever to even get close to the fastest times.

I got to talk to people about Cheerful Ghost, but I wish I had talked more about the site. The competitions took up the majority of Jon's and my attention lol. Next year I hope to be able to talk CG up more.

All around it was a great couple days. Thank you Jon for letting me be a part of it! I already can't wait for next year!

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 11/02/2016 at 06:23pm

How does the retron 3 feel with inserting and pulling out carts? I read some comments on the 5 that it felt like it was going to break them.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/02/2016 at 08:26pm

Will: Yep, it really does clamp on to them hard. It didn't seem to harm them but I wonder how that would work longer term?

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 11/02/2016 at 09:31pm

I think it would be fun to try to build something similar to a retron... Maybe with a raspberry pi? Have an emulator that runs on the pi, then have a device of sorts that takes the carts, plus some retro controller to usb functionality.

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Happy Halloween - What's Everyone Playing?

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Just wanted to wish everyone a very Scary Halloween! Since Halloween falls on a Monday this year I imagine most celebration happened over the weekend but i'm still curious what you all are doing this year? We were going to have a small party but instead we all got sick so we cancelled that and are going to watch the new Ghostbusters later tonight. Also wondering what people have been playing lately? As per normal i've been playing ... Hearthstone. Yeah, I know, not a huge surprise there but I have been continuing my Final Fantasy VI advance game as well as really tearing into Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis.

Stay safe if you are going to be out celebrating or doing... Read All

Portland Retro Gaming Expo

http://www.retrogamingexpo.com/images/shirt-2016a.jpg

Today is Sunday and it's Day 2 of the Portland Retro Gaming Convention! Jon and I are manning the booth, talking to people and right now we have a speed running competition for Super Mario Bros 3! If you are at the convention come stop by!

Steam Developer Days Day II - A Wrap Up To A Great Conference

Even though i'm more than a couple days late to writing about the second day of Steam Developer Days I wanted to get out my thoughts while they are still nearly fresh in my mind. Spoiler alert, day two was incredible but the drive home from Seattle to Portland that night was precarious as I had to navigate the freak storm that occurred as some remnants of Typhoon Songda hit the west coast. I feel bad for my steering wheel as my clenched fingers strangled it for many tense driving moments but the wheel and I made it home safely.

One of the most interesting parts of the second devs days was Mike Ambinder's talk on The Psychology Of Games. When the talks are released from... Read All Even though i'm more than a couple days late to writing about the second day of Steam Developer Days I wanted to get out my thoughts while they are still nearly fresh in my mind. Spoiler alert, day two was incredible but the drive home from Seattle to Portland that night was precarious as I had to navigate the freak storm that occurred as some remnants of Typhoon Songda hit the west coast. I feel bad for my steering wheel as my clenched fingers strangled it for many tense driving moments but the wheel and I made it home safely.

One of the most interesting parts of the second devs days was Mike Ambinder's talk on The Psychology Of Games. When the talks are released from Steam Developer Days I plan on featuring the talk in a post for people to watch and talk more about it. There were many standout parts to Mike's talk but the thing I thought about was how Developer choice can effect player preference. Mike also talked about cognitive dissonance and how they used that to change toxic behavior in DoTA 2. His talk also featured the hilarious picture of him and Gabe embedded above and I want to thank Mike letting me use the image in this blog post.

Another interesting talk was by Ronimo Games(the creators of Awesomenauts) about games as a service. Traditionally a game was released as a physical product and after the initial wave of sales you were done with it. You'd maybe drop a patch or two and sometimes an expansion but for the most part, after launch, developers and companies were done with the game. Ronimo takes a different approach to this with Awesomenauts as they are always releasing content in the form of game patches, heroes, skins and expansions. They've been utilizing the games as a service model since 2012 and it seems to have served them and the fans of the game well. Fans get more of what they love and Ronimo can keep the studio lights on. I found a few things out in this talk in that when players buy Awesomenauts skins one reason they often do that is to support the developers. Players see it more as a patronage of the company and want to support them as a studio. Ronimo also was straight up honest that they held back some content at launch so they could focus on post release promises and be able to fund fixing bugs. Usually companies are not transparent about this but Ronimo was pretty straight forward about the costs of running a studio and being able to keep post release commitments by having the work done in advance.

If I had one suggestion for next years Steam Developer Days it is that I would focus on more advanced topics. It's good to cover things from a beginner level but I wasn't finding each talk to be as meaty or topical as i'd of liked. The talks I highlighted in my two posts were superb but not every talk was as deep as i'd have wanted. That said, I loved that Steam Developer Days was only two days as i've had a rough time when conferences overstay their welcome. All that said, I really enjoyed this years Steam Developer Days and can't wait to head back when Valve does it again in 2018.

If you want to read up on my thoughts on the first day of the conference hit the link below

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3127/steam-developer-days-day-1-vr-is-all-around-you

Steam Developer Days Day 1 - VR Is All Around You

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In 2014 Cheerful Ghost published it's first game Starship Rubicon, an asteroids-esque rogue lite. Working with Wick to take his game to a wider audience was a really fun experience and along the way we hit some fun milestones like releasing the game on Windows, Mac and Linux on Steam. Because of that Cheerful Ghost was asked to attend this years Steam Developer Days and we happily signed up. I wasn't sure what to expect but I figured we'd learn more about what Valve was up to and maybe play some fun games along the way.

It's All About VR Baby!

It might not be too surprising that Valve is focusing heavily on VR and the Vive. The main social area here at Steam Developer... Read All