Wolfenstein: Youngblood has a shiny new trailer out as well as launch date of July 26th along with some pretty fun news. Not only will Youngblood ship on PC, PS4 and XBox One on launch but also the Nintendo Switch! It's awesome to see iD Software treating Switch as a first release platform and if the Doom and Wolfenstein II ports were a tell, the game should run really well. The best way to play this will be on a fully maxed PC but the Switch offers a cool option to people that have the system and don't care about 60fps 4K graphics.

That said, the game is set in the 80's where BJ Blazkowicz is missing and his twin daughters attempt to find him in Paris. Hmmmmm, legendary figure goes missing and doesn't want to be found..... is this BJ's Luke Skywalker Last Jedi moment? According to the incredible trailer, BJ won't be the last person to fight the Nazi's at all.

Oh and it looks like Youngblood will come with a Buddy pass feature allowing you to play the game co-op with a friend if you buy the Deluxe Edition.

"Liberate Paris from the Nazi threat as you search for your father in the first open-ended co-op adventure in the series, either with a friend or an AI companion. Wolfenstein: Youngblood releases on July 26, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

With the Wolfenstein: Youngblood Deluxe Edition you’ll receive the Buddy Pass so you can invite a friend to join the Reich-stomping fun—even if they don’t own the game!"

https://bethesda.net/en/game/wolfenstein-youngblood

Jack Black recently started a YouTube channel dedicated to gaming and is already at 4 million subscribers. Jack posts videos once a week and they are typically about 15 minutes long and are a sort of variety show where he plays games with his kids and then does some game streaming. Lately he's been playing Brutal Legend (the game he lent his voice to as the main character Eddie Riggs) and in the video linked above he continues that session. Jacks YouTube channel is called JablinskiGames and seems like part video game show deconstruction / genuine admiration for anything gaming adjacent. If you love Jack's humor or just want to watch something fun, you really should check out his show.

JablinskiGames : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuriCa9loP_OsH75_5j8M5w

Mega Man 11 might be a perfect game on the Switch. It's a fun platformer with a ton of charm and quite challenging in all the right ways. When I first started out with Mega Man 11 the style took some getting used to as I am most familiar with Mega Man 2. The biggest difference is Mega Man 11 isn't meant to be played start to finish in one sitting, it's a game that leans into longer boss stages and modern consoles ability to save your progress. Plus you start out quite underpowered and can gain screw currency to unlock abilities and items to make the boss stages much easier. Starting out, Mega Man 11 was so difficult I spent some time grinding to collect screws to unlock everything I could. The most notable thing this did was make the boss stages much easier and as such I completed them all last week. Each stage is quite unique and just like the bosses you fight, the robot powers you acquire are really unlike anything I've played in a Mega Man game yet. One of my favorite boss items is the Acid Shield you get from killing Acid Man. The Acid Shield surrounds you for a time and absorbs bullets and some enemy damage. If you do a power move each bullet that is absorbed into the shield is reflected as an acid attack which makes this item a must have for level segments where you have to jump on small ledges while avoiding enemy fire.

I was getting into a good rhythm with the Mega Man 11 boss fights and stages and thought that would translate right into the Wily stages. Good news is much of what you learned does translate but the first stage is SO MUCH harder than any before it. If you do make it to the end of the first Wily stage the Yellow Devil MK-III awaits which is a revision of the Yellow Devil fight from the original Mega Man. Not sure if this is harder than the original game but I haven't been able to kill it yet.

Mega Man 11 is the right amount of Capcom/Mega Man hard while also remaining fair. I'm not sure I could do well in the game without buying all the power-ups but then again, it's a fun way to play it and if I want more challenge I can do it again with stock Mega Man.

Starting April 18th of this year Konami is going to release three all new retro game collections to celebrate its 50th year anniversary! Kicking things off with an Arcade Classics pack taking them back to their early company roots they are including Haunted Castle, Typhoon, Nemesis(Gradius), Vulcan Venture(Gradius II), Life Force, Thunder Cross, Scramble and TwinBee. Each of these Collections are digital releases that will drop on PS4, XBox One, Steam and Nintendo Switch and the first pack is only $20!

They are continuing the hype train with two more releases in early summer of this year with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection as well as the Contra Anniversary Collection. So far the announced games for the Castlevania Collection are Castlevania, Castlevania III Dracula's Curse, Castlevania II Belmont's Revenge on Gameboy & Super Castlevania IV. That Castlevania Collection is already incredibly good but they also have four more games they have yet to announce and as such I'm sure you have some games you'd like included so let me know what you'd love to see in the comments. The Contra Anniversary Collection is also coming and so far they have announced Contra, Super Contra, Super C and Contra III The Alien Wars and as with the Castlevania Collection they have four more games yet to announce.

If Konami keeps the $20 price point per collection, this might be one of the best retro game digital download values of the year. Castlevania and Castlevania II were included on the NES Classic but I felt like not adding Contra in favor of Super C was a missed opportunity so now you can relive the glory on your PC, PS4, Switch or XBox One!

"In celebration with the 50th anniversary since KONAMI was founded, this Anniversary Collection series highlights many of the iconic arcade games and classic console titles that have been loved by fans throughout the years, and are made available on many of the latest platforms. From the shooters to action, these collections are packed with beloved titles that are simple to play and yet addicting to the core.

KONAMI welcomes everyone, from those who were glued to their CRT TVs or the arcade machines back in the day to first-time players, to enjoy a part of our history. All collections will be digital-exclusive and can be downloaded from the various online stores. We give our utmost gratitude to each and every fan from all over the world for playing our games throughout the years!"

https://www.konami.com/games/50th/ac/arcade/us/en/
https://www.konami.com/games/50th/ac/castlevania/us/en/
https://www.konami.com/games/50th/ac/castlevania/us/en/

Google unveiled its next gen video game streaming service Stadia today at the Game Developers Conference. The response on social media was pretty standard, lots of jokes about lag and a general "meh" attitude. The "who cares" attitude makes a lot of sense with just some basic information in hand, that said after I watched the above Digital Foundry Stadia spec explanation and comparison of it alongside current generation consoles it seems much more compelling.

Stadia First Generation Machine Specs

The first thing that's compelling to me about Stadia is that Google is focusing the first generation offering on a cloud system spec that blows current consoles out of the water. Whereas it's not hard to get a PC to beat an XBox One getting that to run seamlessly in the cloud is and if Google ties all of it together well, Stadia could be very interesting. According to Digital Foundry the base Stadia specs are 2.7GHZ Hyper-threaded CPU, Customer AMD 10.7 Teraflop / 1495 MHz GPU, 16G RAM & practically unlimited SSD storage.

Stadia Will Stream Through YouTube

Google has said that you can watch a video of Assassin's Creed and immediately click a button to play it in Stadia. Apparently Stadia games will be easy to share and embedded just like YouTube and just as easy to watch on all your devices. It's an interesting concept that you could buy a TV with Stadia embedded in it and play triple A games streaming right to it without any updates right out of the box.

The Stadia Controller Connects over Wifi

The Google Stadia controller doesn't connect to your device over Bluetooth but Wifi so you can play games on devices that don't support controller connectivity such as Google's Chromecast. I've never heard of a controller connecting over WiFi which would impose some lag but also make connectivity as easy as connecting to Wifi.

The Final Countdown & Questions

Simply streaming video games isn't enough to get people to use Stadia but the way Google is approaching it will. After this announcement I was solidly moved from the "meh" camp to eagerly interested in Stadia. That's a big movement considering I love owning video games, films and music and have quite a collection already. I view Stadia a lot like I view Netflix in that the films and games I love i'll still buy but Stadia might offer a great alternative to ownership when you just want to play something for a handful of hours or don't want to invest in expensive hardware.

My only question at this point is how Stadia be monetized? Will you buy games on Stadia just like any other store and then Google streams that game to you for all time? Will Stadia be a Netflix like service where you pay Google monthly fee for all the games you can play?

It's a secret to everybody.

https://store.google.com/magazine/stadia

Avengers Endgame is coming to theaters April 26th (yeah, it's that soon!) and to keep the hype train non-dusted Marvel has dropped a brand new trailer. It's a fun journey through the MCU starting with the first Iron Man and also shows clips of Captain America over the years. The trailer also shows a brief spoiler in that Tony Stark seems to survive being adrift in space.... which makes sense as killing off Iron Man by slowly suffocating doesn't seem like a fitting end to his character. The ending of the trailer has a fun moment you have to watch fresh so I won't describe it here, but it's something you should check out.

To me, Dwarf Fortress is one of the most important pieces of art in our time. The level of sophistication of the game is astounding and Tarn and Zach consider it to be something they will work on... indefinitely. That kind of focus and passion is rare and because of the games lasting artistic impact Tarn is going to hand over the source code to the game to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) upon his death. I was lucky enough to meet up with him some years ago at PAX and talk to him about Dwarf Fortress as well as possibly releasing Dwarf Fortress as free software (not an idea he supported at the time, he'd rather hand it over to the MoMA). The only downside to Dwarf Fortress is that it's so rich and deep I have very little time to play it and it's a real shame. That said, it looks like it's going to get a lot more accessible to players as it's getting a formal graphical update from it's ASCII roots as well as going to be for sale on Steam and Itch.

To-date Dwarf Fortress has been available to download for free on Bay 12 Games website and this won't change. But if you want an auto-updated version, official non-ASCII 2D graphics and easily installable through Steam or Itch, this is for you. Seems like a big reason Bay 12 is doing this is to raise money to help some family with health issues and I hope this goes over well for them and the publisher they are working with, Kitfox Games.

Read the entire FAQ on Dwarf Fortress coming to Steam, Itch and on working with publisher Kitfox.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xwhi1KKp5QD9R4-euZ0JqRB0vHdNPqdBJXjIgp-yYHA/edit

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Microsoft announced that the Halo Master Chief Collection is coming to PC via the Windows Store and Steam later this year. Frankly, this is very exciting news but nothing I actually thought they would do. Halo is one of the reasons to get an XBox and now that seems to have lessened a bit. All that to say, is this something you are looking to get? I played mostly the original Halo but not many of the other entries, the Master Chief Collection remastered the original games and brought new life to the multiplayer modes which is something I bet PC gamers will love!

"Later this year, these classic Halo experiences will start to arrive on PC via the Microsoft Store and, for the first time in the series - on Steam. This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us to bring the Halo Universe and Master Chief’s story to a new audience and to offer PC gamers a chance to step into the franchise on the PC platform of their choice.

The Master Chief’s arrival on PC will happen in stages with each title releasing one by one over time - giving the development teams the ability to ensure each one is right, while giving players a chance to jump in right away, rather than having to wait for the entire suite of games to be completed. Our current plan is for this journey to begin with the launch of Halo: Reach – the fictional beginnings of Master Chief’s saga – with the rest of the titles following in chronological order thereafter. Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST (Campaign), and Halo 4 will each be available for individual purchase within MCC as they become available. And each game will evolve and grow over time with community input.

For the team at 343 Industries, the most important and critical element of this project is ensuring that MCC delivers a true “first class” experience on PC. We’re embarking on a journey with our community to build a real PC experience that delivers on PC gamer expectations. The team is passionately committed to ensuring that all the features, bells, and whistles expected in a modern PC title are included with MCC. These features may vary somewhat by title, and we won’t get everything in there all at once – this is a product and an experience that will grow and evolve over time. We are laying the groundwork for PC native features such as excellent mouse and keyboard controls, support for multiple resolutions and aspect ratios, field-of-view sliders, and adjustable framerates, to name but a few. And yes, there will be support for Xbox gamepads and other PC controllers."

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/mcc-pc-halo-reach

Even if entirely impractical, I have a special place in my heart for R.O.B. the Robot Operating Buddy. I knew people that had one yet it was so slow and clunky to use we didn't even try to play Gyromite with it. The Gaming Historian makes the case that Nintendo created R.O.B. to get into stores after the video game crash but that they might have been successful without it. It's hard to say ultimately what would have happened if they didn't create R.O.B. but there's not denying how big Robots were at the time and including one with the Nintendo was a huge attractor for young kids.

Retro game esoterica is something I relish and moreso if it's focused on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The Gaming Historian has a new video out covering The Aladdin Deck Enhancer by Codemasters the creators of the Game Genie.

"Learn about the history of a unique NES accessory, the Aladdin Deck Enhancer! In the early 90's, the 16-bit war between Sega and Nintendo was heating up. But one company was thinking about the past: Camerica. In January of 1993, they announced the Aladdin Deck Enhancer, a device for your 8-bit NES that played proprietary compact cartridges. Why? Watch the video to find out!"