"Balance and Ruin features seventy-four tracks from seventy-four artists, arranging from the soundtrack of Final Fantasy VI for the SNES. It was made by fans, for fans, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Square Enix; all original compositions are copyright their respective owners. This album was produced to help promote video game music, Nobuo Uematsu's amazing compositions, and the talented artists that contributed to this project."

After downloading it and listening to a few tracks already I recommend you pick this up if you were a fan of Final Fantasy VI or just love remix albums in general. The album is a free download available as a straight MP3 download or you can get a FLAC, MP3 + Art torrent.

Check the songs out and let me know how it turns out for you. Kupo!

http://ff6.ocremix.org/

Continuing the season of great video game sales Sony has entered the mix with its Summer Blast Sale. It has a few titles on sale at different times including the Ratchet and Clank Collection, Mortal Kombat, Scott Pilgrim VS The World, The Simpsons Arcade Game and Alice Madness Returns. Sony is also marking down a few digital films such as The Dark Knight, Inception, The Expendables and Toy Story 3.

Its cool to see these PSN digital titles get marked down and also see some movies added to the mix. Might be a good chance to pickup a few games on the PS3.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/07/01/psn-summer-blast-hot-discounts-starting-tomorrow/

Not to be left in the cold, Amazon is showcasing its Digital Games Summer Sale. Featuring such awesome games as Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, Dead Space 3, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 and more. Many of the games are for an "online game code" which if memory serves is actually a Steam Key and some are downloadable on Amazon, so read up on which games are which.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=br_lf_m_1000716161_pglink_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000716161&plgroup=1&plpage=1

Cool to see so many companies jumping on the Summer Sale Bandwagon.

I get the same feeling when I see certain people on Facebook as well. That said, to this point I haven't ever seen my arch enemy. I attribute that to good algorithms.

There is a new Dragon Age game in development by EA that looks interesting. The trailer features Morrigan, one of the characters in Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age 2 was reviewed poorly and because of this I wonder how EA will handle this latest incarnation.

Are you interested in the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition?

Nintendo's Wii brought me back to serious gaming. The Wii wasn't a system aimed at the serious gamer but at the time it acted as a gateway for me to the PS3 and then later back to the PC. I look at the Wii fondly and still have it under my TV and don't imagine it will be displaced for quite some time. I was thinking about my history with the Wii and have been thinking about how it has impacted gaming.

The upcoming months to the Wii's release were interesting as many people I knew that were lapsed gamers were interested in gaming again. At the time the only games I played were those I could get to run in Wine or had a native Linux port. Because of this I wasn't a serious gamer as playing games this way was difficult. The Wii seemed interesting to me as I hadn't played a new Mario or Zelda game in years and the motion controls were something pretty unique. Wii Sports looked really interesting and it was a console my wife seemed interested in. To that point Nintendo interested me in ways Sony or Microsoft couldn't with the PS2 and Xbox. Those systems were popular with many, but I wasn't terribly interested in them at the time.

After the Wii was released it was immediately being sold on EBay and Craigslist for crazily marked up prices. I skipped the initial Wii craze and bought one when it was reasonably easy to get from a store. When my wife and I decided we wanted to buy one we would call local stores in the morning to see if they had it in stock. One morning on a Sunday I found a store that had it in stock and I immediately headed over to buy it. I took pictures of the whole event and unboxing of the system. This was well before unboxing videos were popular on YouTube and I still have the pictures in my digital collection. It was a really exciting day and we were very happy to finally play it.

We bought the Wii and Wii Play. At the time Wii Play came with the game and an extra controller. Combined with Wii Sports and Wii Play we were pretty enveloped in the Wii for quite a few months. When friends came over, we would play the games and it was a great system to have at a party.

One the reasons I got the Wii was its backwards compatibility with the Game Cube, a system I wanted but never had. I nabbed The Sonic Mega Collection, Wind Waker, The Metal Slug Anthology and Metroid Prime.

The main games I played the most on my Wii were Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii and Twilight Princess. All good games and I was happy with them all.

When Netflix came to the Wii via the Netflix DVD the Wii became more popular than our DVD player. Being able to stream movies and shows to the Wii was incredible and when the Wii app was launched it changed how we watched TV and Movies. To this day using Netflix is the thing we do on our consoles more than playing games. Netflix has given them a much longer lease on life than they otherwise would as well and I imagine for many this is true.

The games that we have played on the Wii in the last few years have been Just Dance 2, 3 and 4. While they are far from hardcore they are fun at parties where there is beer involved. In fact, for a few years, they were a staple for many of the parties I attended with friends. If you haven't tried them, I recommend you give them a shot. I don't listen to pop radio so many of the songs I heard for the first time in Just Dance.

I recently picked up Tetris Party Deluxe which is a fantastic 4 player Tetris game that gave the Wii a new lease on gaming life. Currently the Wii serves as a backup Netflix device for when the PS3 isn't able to connect. Its a great system and still has a spot under the TV for the foreseeable future. Some gamers look back at the Wii with a bit of hostility due to its non-hardcore nature but as I wanted gaming experiences it couldn't provide I looked elsewhere happily. For that the Wii came to do it did it well and for that I think it was a great system.

ConcernedApe the one man development whirlwind bringing us Stardew Valley has posted another development update. The post covers the addition of flowers and the updated art for tools and player animations.

The game is looking very polished and I can't wait to try this when it ships. As always, when a launch date is announced I will let you know.

http://stardewvalley.net/mini-dev-update-7/

Our friends over at Night Dive Studios created a great infographic showing really noteworthy games on DOS. It features classics such as Doom, Warcraft 2, Starcontrol, Full Throttle, Out of This World, Scorched Earth and others.

check it out here:

http://www.nightdivestudios.com/images/list-of-worthwhile-dos-games.jpg

https://www.facebook.com/NightDiveStudios

"Broforce is a hyperviolent action platform game. It features 90′s blockbuster movie action heroes making up the Broforce team- an under-funded vigilante paramilitary organisation – saving the world from satanic alien terrorist investment banker businessmen in non-stop, fast paced co-operative strategic mayhem filled with more action and explosions than anything else, ever."

After watching the Broforce trailer I was intrigued. Being able to play as Brommando, Rambro, BA Broacus, Bro Hard, Brodel Walker, Brade, Bro Dredd, MacBrover, Snake Broskin, Indiana Brones, The Brominator, Bro in Black & Brobocop is like my 80's childhood dream come true.

Do your soul a favor and vote for Broforce on Steam Greenlight and if you are feeling the adventure call to you, checkout the Alpha demo.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93927889
http://www.freelives.net/BROFORCE/BROFORCE_WEB.html

Broforce will also be part of the Greenlight Super show, so check it if you can!

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/28

Robot Loves Kitty, the amazing awesome factory that created Legend of Dungeon and other Indie hits is organizing the The Greenlight Supershow. This all day Twitch stream will feature a ton of awesome indie games currently on Steam Greenlight. Featuring such radery as Chasm, Ray's The Dead, Castaway, Broforce, McPixel, Delvers Drop & More this event is a must watch.

You can join the Cheerful Ghost event and add it to your calendar for a helpful reminder of when it happens and where to go.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/28

http://robotloveskitty.com/supershow/
http://www.twitch.tv/robotloveskitty/

Recently vgleaks dropped the news that Sony's Playstation 4 dev kits run a version of FreeBSD 9 called Orbis. In the included screenshots on vgleaks they show the GRUB bootloader offering a few boot choices with Orbis included.

For all of you that are not the most geekily inclined, FreeBSD is a Open Source version of Unix that is an ancestor of Mac OSX. What that means is that Sony's Orbis, Mac OSX and Linux share a very similar Unix core. Since they all rely on OpenGL and the like it could mean an easier time for games to be ported across these three platforms.

I know that just because a company brings a game to the PS4 that doesn't mean they care about Linux or MacOS. But the fact that the PS4 has a OS core similar would make it easier to port games to other similar Unix platforms.

This is even more interesting when you realize that Valve has talked about using Linux as the core to its Steam console.

http://www.vgleaks.com/some-details-about-playstation-4-os-development/
http://www.freebsd.org/