Recently I was gifted Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration – Expanded Edition on Switch and over the course of a few nights worked my way through it. The collection is one part historical documentary and one part games collection. With that, i'd say the Anniversary Celebration's strength is in the historical layout of the games, art and documentary style videos. By the end I was wanting more videos about Atari and the games, which I suppose is a good thing. Still, all the Atari games you'd want to play are here and that's fun but I do wish there was more of the documentary included.

That said, if you want to play all the core Atari hits and want a great historical accounting of the history of Atari you need to pick up the Anniversary Celebration!

I guess since we haven't received a X-Men Arcade re-release this is the next best thing. I loved Shredder's Revenge and this looks to be made by the same company.

"Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a new game in the classic brawler style coming from DotEmu. Nova, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Phyla-Vell, Captain America, and many more heroes, both earth-born and cosmic, will join forces in a star-spanning brawling adventure against the deadly Annihilation Wave. Marvel Cosmic Invasion coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (PS4), PlayStation 5 (PS5), Xbox, and PC (Steam) in 2025."

"The new Virtual Game Card feature lets you easily manage your digital Nintendo Switch games, including lending to your Nintendo Account Family Group members! This new system update will be released in late April."

Virtual Game Cards aren't as flexible as regular game carts but it's something and nice to see before the launch of Switch 2.

iD's reboot of the DOOM franchise came out in 2016 and went on to win quite a few awards and player accolades as well as spawned a few sequels. Recently, I finally found some time to complete the whole messy affair and it was a lot of fun. Perfect? No. Does it live up to the greatness of the original DOS game? Yep.

Firstly the new DOOM game is a bloody, violent and pulse-poundingly fast game that doesn't spare any demons on your way to keep Hell out of Earth. The things I really like about DOOM 2016 are that it controls very well and once you learn how to swap between the guns and what guns are better for certain enemies the game plays like a frantic rock paper scissors blood-fiesta. Dying in DOOM doesn't penalize you that much as you can reload before each area and try you hand at things again. In this way, DOOM feels like a Hotline Miami, which is another game where you go from arena to arena and defeat the enemies in, sometimes, new and interesting ways.

Each gun feels incredible and I really enjoyed the ways you could customize them to your liking. You even earn enough points to develop both gun skill trees which is fun to do even if I didn't really try each gun tree. Usually I found the one that sounded the best and stuck to that. One gun combo I used to much satisfaction was the Plasma+Stun which allows me to stun lock a demon and smash it with enough bullets to kill it. I did this a lot and it worked every time on every demon I tried it on.

One part of DOOM that got quite stale was in the last 25% of the game being the amount of demon arenas the game tosses your way. In fact, that's just about all the game is. Walk a bit, do a story thing, then do an arena, arena, walk and do a story thing then another arena. DOOM is fun, it's just that the arenas get a bit long in the tooth and by the end I wanted to just have it be over already.

I appreciated the final boss fight wasn't long winded, or very hard so the game could wrap up nicely and all the demons could finally die or spend all their time where in hell where they belong.

I picked up DOOM 2016 in a recent Humble Bundle and played it on a combination of my PC & Steam Deck. DOOM plays great on the deck, but having a larger screen on my PC was more my style. Looking forward to picking up DOOM Eternal and I've heard it's even better, which sounds awesome. I just hope it doesn't take me nine years to finally beat it once I do.

The Frost Fatales 2025 set of Speedruns has started supporting the National Women's Law Center charity. If you enjoy watching games run quick and want to support a great charity please flex your credit card in the direction of Games Done Quick.

"The National Women's Law Center fights for gender justice—in the courts, in public policy, and in our society—working across the issues that are central to the lives of women and girls. They use the law in all its forms to change culture and drive solutions to the gender inequity that shapes our society and to break down the barriers that harm all of us—especially women of color, LGBTQ people, and low-income women and families."

During the Christmas holiday I was gifted a copy of Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster on Steam. I decided to tuck in and play it all the way to the end and I'm close to besting the final boss Golbez! Firstly I think it's worth noting that the pixel remaster of Final Fantasy IV is incredible. Historically the version we got on Super Nintendo in the US, Final Fantasy II was quite different than Final Fantasy IV in Japan. The game was made easier for the folks in the US and many special abilities were removed entirely like Cecil's darkness attack and more. Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster adds a few quality of life improvements like a quick save feature to save anywhere you are as well as the ability to press A to speed up your movement, which is a life saver in long dungeons. Ultimately the game is harder and closer to the original with some incredible graphical improvements and a completely remade score. You can switch back to the original Super Nintendo audio if you wish, but for this playthrough I'm listening to the new audio.

If you love the Final Fantasy games this pixel remaster is well worth a shot and if you wanted to replay it this is the best way to do that. We'll always have the original Super Nintendo game from the 90's but if you wanted something more like the original Japanese release, this is it.

"The Kingdom of Baron sent their elite airship fleet, the Red Wings, to attack the surrounding countries. Distressed by his mission, Cecil, a dark knight and captain of the Red Wings, decides to fight against the tyrannical Baron with his trusted friend and his paramour at his side.

"The game brings the groundbreaking action movie ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ to life with the trademark adrenaline-pumping arcade gameplay and glorious pixel artwork the Bitmap Bureau team are known for. Check out this behind-the-scenes look at how the team tackled the challenge of translating one of cinema’s most enduring cultural touchstones into a complete arcade experience, capturing the unforgettable scenes and moments that helped shape a generation."

A new Terminator 2 game launching on all the platforms on September 5th? No problemo.

Awesome Games Done Quick will be running all week to benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Please tune in and donate!

" For over 10 years, Games Done Quick has been a charity fundraising organization that raises money for charity via speedrunning. Volunteers play games at incredible speed ("Speedrunning") for entertainment. Our events are streamed live online, non-stop, and all donations go directly to the charity. Games Done Quick events feature runners playing games from every generation of gaming history! They play their games live, and explain in detail the many tricks and glitches they use to get the fastest times.

During our events, be sure to take a look at the various donation incentives, which can include additional challenges, new content, and even quirky things like naming in-game characters! Be sure to take a look at the list while you're filling out your donation. "

https://gamesdonequick.com

https://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick

Balatro is one of the hottest Indie games to come out in quite sometime and continues to win big after earning five nominations at The Game Awards 2024. This holiday I was gifted Balatro on Steam and on Christmas Day I decided to install it and give it a go.

First thing, I am not a Poker expert and as such don't have any particular winning strategies. I didn't feel like that was a huge deal and if you don't know much about Poker like me, there is an easy chart in Balatro to let you know what kinds of hands you can win. Balatro is a poker based deck building game where you try and level up your cards and collect enough Jokers to score big during enough rounds to win a run. I've played quite a few deck builder rogue-likes and Balatro seems like one more my speed. The basic Poker game is simple and adding on that is easy to understand and build on from run to run.

In other modern Rogues like Vampire Survivors you can unlock more powerful cards during runs making each subsequent run a bit easier. That said, getting a great run isn't guaranteed and that's what makes each game fun.

I've been playing the game on couch on my Steam Deck and I heartily recommend playing it this way. That said, you can pick it up on nearly any modern system with a game store and since it's a light retro graphics based game it will be incredible in nearly any context.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 Valve has released a ton of new content for the game as well as releasing it for free in it's entirety for a limited time! There is also a Half-Life 2 documentary that I've embedded here for you to view, I haven't seen it yet but plan to watch it as soon as I can. Seems like if you haven't played Half-life 2 yet or wanted to get back in, now is a great time.

Some of the changes in the new version:

* Episodes One and Two are in the box. Half-Life 2 now includes the complete Episode One and Episode Two expansions along with the base game. They’re accessible from the main menu, and you will automatically advance to the next expansion after completing each one.
* Developers Commentary for Half-Life 2. While the Episodes have always had commentary tracks, the base game never did... until now. We got the team back to record three and a half hours of new behind-the-scenes commentary for Half-Life 2.
* Integrated Steam Workshop support. Browse, install, and play user-created content for Half-Life 2 without ever leaving the game. Look for it in the Extras menu!
* Bug fixes and new graphics options. Visual pops, missing sprites, and mismatched lighting introduced in updates over the years have been scrubbed away. And we've added some settings to push the visual fidelity of Half-Life 2 farther than was allowed in the original release.

https://www.half-life.com/en/halflife2/20th
https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/