
General Discussion
The place for conversation that doesn't make sense to talk about in any specific game in our list. Think of General Discussion as a "catch all" for conversations about gaming, game culture or anything else worth sharing.
Starting fresh with RPM Racing then moving to The Lost Vikings, Rock n' Roll Racing, Blackthorne, The Death and Return of Superman, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Justice League Task Force, Warcraft II: The Tides of Darkness, Diablo, The Lost Vikings 2, StarCraft, StarCraft: Brood War, Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm,...

"Amazon Lumberyard is a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine for you to create the highest-quality games, connect your games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch.
You can use Amazon Lumberyard to build rich and engaging games with the highest ceiling of quality through its comprehensive and proven toolset, and runtime performance that has been highly optimized over many years. With Lumberyard, you get a full-featured editor, native code performance, stunning visuals, and hundreds of other features like performant networking, character and animation editors, particle editor, cloth physics, UI editor, audio tools, weather effects,...
You can use Amazon Lumberyard to build rich and engaging games with the highest ceiling of quality through its comprehensive and proven toolset, and runtime performance that has been highly optimized over many years. With Lumberyard, you get a full-featured editor, native code performance, stunning visuals, and hundreds of other features like performant networking, character and animation editors, particle editor, cloth physics, UI editor, audio tools, weather effects,...

Insomniac Games recently announced a new title they're releasing this summer "Song of the Deep". I really enjoy almost every Insomniac release (especially Ratchet and Clank) so I follow them closely and now I'm eagerly awaiting this "Metroidvania-style underwater adventure"
Announcement: http://www.insomniacgames.com/announcing-song-deep/
Announcement: http://www.insomniacgames.com/announcing-song-deep/

File this under "completely nerdy stuff no one may care about" but I've thought it would be interesting to post some of our website statistics for a month. This isn't to wreck privacy or anything, mostly to get a snapshot of the average Cheerful Ghost patron. For instance, did you know what the most popular web browsers Cheerful Ghost users use?
Well, now you do.
These statistics were from December 2015.
Users
Well, now you do.
These statistics were from December 2015.
Users
- Each user hit 1.64 pages per session*
- The average user session duration is about 1 minute and 49 seconds
- The percentage of totally new users/sessions is 64.17% which means we have more new people looking around than site regulars
- The top browser languages in order...

Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday SPRIIIIIIGGGHTTT Happy Birthday to you!
Today Cheerful Ghost turns 4! 4 is one of those years where it feels like something substantial but it's not quite 5 years but we didn't just start yesterday either. As Cheerful Ghost hovers onward in 2016 I've really been enjoying this time in gaming and how we've all been talking about it together. PC gaming is incredible right now as we have an embarrassment of riches in Indie and Triple A games. Mobile has never been stronger with a wealth of great smartphone titles as well as 2D/3DS games and the Vita is there to give people some mobile Playstation enjoyment....
Today Cheerful Ghost turns 4! 4 is one of those years where it feels like something substantial but it's not quite 5 years but we didn't just start yesterday either. As Cheerful Ghost hovers onward in 2016 I've really been enjoying this time in gaming and how we've all been talking about it together. PC gaming is incredible right now as we have an embarrassment of riches in Indie and Triple A games. Mobile has never been stronger with a wealth of great smartphone titles as well as 2D/3DS games and the Vita is there to give people some mobile Playstation enjoyment....

Retro YouTube gamer Metal Jesus interviews the retro game collector Kacy da Game Nerd. Metal Jesus focuses on Kacy's complete Wii collection and asks him a bit about his other collections(game cube, gameboy advance). Kacy has 1260 Wii games admitting that 1/3 is shovelware which an unfortunate reality of Wii games. I think the Wii is a great system and according to Kacy if you want to get Wii games now is a good time to pick them up because most are not expensive.
I still play my Wii and have a couple games I have left to get such ask Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy 2 and Punch Out.
I still play my Wii and have a couple games I have left to get such ask Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy 2 and Punch Out.

Did you know you can have your Steam controller play music using the haptic vibrations? Now you do.
Now if someone could program it to play Nirvana?
Now if someone could program it to play Nirvana?

In this episode of the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable we talk about our highlights of 2015 in gaming as well as talk about what we are looking forward to in 2016. We take a break to read some Chick Tracts, discuss paid mods as well as our guesses or general lack of knowledge around Nintendo's new dream console NX!
jdodson may also have first coined "Triple Indie" to discuss Indie games with large budgets. Even if he wasn't, it's still nice to dream big! Come for the discussion stay for Scrypt drinking so much he can't think of what to say next!
Notes:
Cheerful Ghost 2015 GoTY Awards - http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2753/cheerful-ghost-2015-game-of-the-year-awards
...
jdodson may also have first coined "Triple Indie" to discuss Indie games with large budgets. Even if he wasn't, it's still nice to dream big! Come for the discussion stay for Scrypt drinking so much he can't think of what to say next!
Notes:
Cheerful Ghost 2015 GoTY Awards - http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2753/cheerful-ghost-2015-game-of-the-year-awards
...

I was not aware of this game show, but as a 90's kid, it would have been my favorite, easily.
If you've not seen it before, I recommend you check it out. It's pretty "rad."
At least check out the theme at the beginning.
Word.
(Also it includes all the commercials, which are an amazing 90's time capsule as well)
If you've not seen it before, I recommend you check it out. It's pretty "rad."
At least check out the theme at the beginning.
Word.
(Also it includes all the commercials, which are an amazing 90's time capsule as well)

YouTuber ASMR made this video where he pages through Electronic Gaming Monthly while he whispers his thoughts about them. His channel is dedicated to him doing playing games, crinkling plastic and going through magazines while whispering. If you were really excited about looking over some EGM magazines while someone softly talks to you, get ready for an amazing time!
Decided to share this because this was so different I had to share it with somebody.
Decided to share this because this was so different I had to share it with somebody.

Huh. I knew about RPM Racing, The Lost Vikings, Rock n' Roll Racing, and Blackthorne, then all those awesome Blizzard titles we all know and love, but I never knew about The Death and Return of Superman. That was probably my first Blizzard game. Weird!
In terms of the standard games we think of as Blizzard games, Warcraft II was my first.
I think I barely remember playing Rock n' Roll Racing with a friend on their SNES, but I didn't pay attention to the developer. Years later, when I got a PC, I got into Warcraft II after seeing the review in PC Gamer (maybe I played a demo, I can't recall). After that, I played Warcraft.
I picked up Starcraft when it came out. In fact, I traveled half an hour to Wal-Mart in another state (West Virginia) because I had trouble finding it locally. I really enjoyed it at the time and then again at least a few times years later (which includes the expansion). When I got my new beast of a PC, I got Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. More recently, I finished Legacy of the Void and I have the new expansion pre-ordered.
A few or couple of years ago I got into Diablo III (because of Cheerful Ghost), which was the first I've played of the series. After that, I found the Diablo II Battlechest in KMart for $2, so I bought it, but I didn't spend very much time playing it. I do have a demo for Warcraft III, but haven't spent much time with it either.
I think I haven't played many of the other games. I also played Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, but not as much for the latter.
I first brushed up to Blizzard seeing Blackthrone, Rock N Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings in Nintendo Power. I always wanted to play them but since the games I could own was limited, I merely dreamed of playing them. The Lost Vikings in particular looked really fun, but alas no Vikings for 90's Jon.
My first actual experience with a Blizzard game was Warcraft: Orcs and Humans on floppy disk. I played through the humans and orcs campaign and loved all of it. The game was a bit easy after you figured out a solid build order and the magic users were super overpowered so, essentially you made a couple of them and summoned stuff to wipe out the bad guys. That said, it's a really solid DOS game and I really enjoyed the simplicity of it. Hopefully they can port it to modern systems because again, it's a pretty solid game but I haven't played it recently.