jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2759 Posts

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This year Valve released an official list of the top 100 best selling games on Steam. I've seen some people chide this list as No Man's Sky is one of the top Platinum sellers and many think that if you consider the returns, No Man's Sky shouldn't be a Platinum Seller. Well, that would be the case if gross revenue didn't automatically adjust for returns, which it does. So... yeah, the list is accurate and I really found it fascinating to read through.

The top Platinum sellers of 2016 weren't to surprising in Fallout 4, CS: GO, Total War Warhammer, Dark Souls 3, DoTA 2, Civilization VI, No Man's Sky, Grand Theft Auto 5, XCom 2, Tom Clancy's Division, Rocket League and The Witcher 3.

Stardew Valley and Doom rounded out the Gold top sellers and the ever continued greats such as Terraria and Age of Empires II HD charted on the bronze list.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2016_top_sellers/


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I was really happy to open up the New Nintendo 3DS for Christmas this year as it's nice to own a newish Nintendo handheld. Setting up the new system from boot to accessing the 3DS Nintendo online store wasn't too bad considering I've heard Nintendo's online offerings are pretty abysmal. I wasn't expecting anything fantastic with the online experience but I have been really surprised with how seamless the whole eShop system has been. In fact the whole online connected experience on the 3DS has more than met my expectations. Surprisingly enough the 3DS has the ability to watch YouTube and Netflix even though YouTube is a less than stellar experience. I'm also not sure why you'd watch a Netflix video on it either but it's here and it works well if you need to use it for that in a pinch. The web browser is pretty terrible but i'd sort of blame the lacking horsepower of the 3DS as the reason why these apps suffer compared to the smartphone in your pocket. Speaking of horsepower the 3DS sports 256 megs of RAM an 804 MHZ quad core CPU and a 4G micro SD flash card for storage. Immediately I got a 32G micro SD card for cheap because I planned on downloading a ton of 3DS demos.

The biggest draw to owning a new 3DS is playing Nintendo games and so far I've been very impressed with what I've played. The battery life seems more than adequate to my play style and the controller grip, buttons and action are superb. Makes sense that Nintendo shines here as they've been making handheld systems for years and it shows. I've heard earlier models had issues but I haven't seen any of that in what I have here.

Beyond the mountain of 3DS demos awaiting me I've picked up New Super Mario Bros DS, Legend of Starfy DS, Ocarina of Time 3D, Link Between Worlds and New Yoshi's Island. I've heard great things about the Bravely Default series and am waiting to try my hand at the demos before I decide to pick it up or not. I've also never played a proper modern Pokemon game either so, again, i'll try out the demo before I pick it up. Which, you know, is honestly pretty refreshing to have a demo of a game coming from the PC world. Demos are very rare and if they exist are capped to a very short experience on PC. On the 3DS they are gated to 30 plays which seems like a really unique way to do it. Even with the high accessibility of the eShop my preference is to own the physical game cart of a game I want to play which so far hasn't been a huge problem even though some 3DS games are no longer "in print" from Nintendo such as Link Between Worlds.

New Super Mario Bros on DS is a great game to start with as it is a pretty average difficulty Mario game and hasn't seemed overstuffed with level filler. So far I've spent about 5 hours on the game and just opened up World 6 and the final stage World 8 is up after I complete World 6 so I don't think i'm too far from the end. I've nearly abandoned Super Mario Run in favor of New Super Mario Bros as New Super Mario Bros is essentially the same game but it was cheaper ($8 used at Goodwill) and frankly, is a better game. Like Super Mario Run you can collect three big coins in a stage and go back to replay each level to collect them all. Collecting more big coins allows you to unlock special Toad Houses and shortcuts through worlds. New Super Mario Bros also comes with a Mario battle arena you can use to challenge a friend as well as a myriad of mini games I have yet to try. Since New Super Mario Bros was made for the original DS the graphics aren't as good as Super Mario Run but honestly it doesn't matter much as the base platforming is top notch. I'm not slamming Super Mario Run as they are really different games but if I had a choice between Super Mario Run and New Super Mario Bros i'd personally pick the latter one.

So far I've been really surprised with how great the new 3DS is such that I've begun to think if Nintendo can make the new Nintendo Switch as good or better then Switch will be absolutely incredible. Hopefully the Nintendo Switch will get all the great things from the 3DS and fix many of the limitations inherent with it such and underpowered system and a better online experience. It seems a lot of third party developers are jumping on the new Nintendo Switch hype train so it will be good to see what games end up chugging into the station on launch day. Nintendo will have an upcoming livestream showing off more details about the Switch and you can join the Cheerful Ghost event below if you are interested in talking more about it below.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/135/nintendo-switch-live-stream


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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 up: Super Mario Run

If you want to look into what games took the awards for the last couple years, check out the links below. I am really happy with the games that won in years past as many of them I still play to this day.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2753/cheerful-ghost-2015-game-of-the-year-awards
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2351/the-winners-of-the-cheerful-ghost-2014-goty-awards
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/868/2012-cheerful-ghost-community-goty-awards


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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


Hey everyone. After collecting all the entries for this years Game of the Year, I have them now in poll form for you to vote on. Thanks to everyone that added games to the list.

Triple A Game of the Year:

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=58674561e4b0b90e31f33e87

Indie Game of the Year:

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=58674645e4b0b90e31f33e8a

Update/DLC Of the Year:

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=586746b6e4b0b90e31f33e8d

Mobile Game of the Year:

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=58674706e4b0b90e31f33e8e

Please select your top games and the winner will be the highest voted game. I will also list out the others so we all know how it turned out.

Voting will be open today until January 1st so feel free to share this out with your friends!


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It's time for the 2016 Cheerful Ghost Game of the Year Awards Nomination thread. Please drop your nominations for the following categories below:

Triple A Game of the Year

Indie Game of the Year

Update of the Year

Mobile Game of the Year

I'll close nominations on the 30th so get your suggestions in now! If by some happenstance we get no nominations or two or less for one category we will drop it for the year. If you are curious what last years winners were, you can check that out below (spoiler alert Fallout 4 and Rocket League won)

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/2753/cheerful-ghost-2015-game-of-the-year-awards


"The NES Classic is the hot ticket item of the holiday season and it's currently sold out across the country due to the high demand. Nintendo is working on supplying retail stores with the mini NES, but a full restock isn't expected to take place until after Christmas. Fortunately, there's an alternative for retro gamers seeking an HD 8-bit experience that's more authentic than the popular Nintendo plug & play console. In this Cygnus Destroyer special, we take a look at the RetroUSB AVS."

The Retro USB AVS was all over the Portland Retro Game Expo this year and looks to be one of the best ways to play your NES games on your HD TV. It sports a premium price but ships with a few cool features like built in Game Genie support, online North America Scoreboard, 4 NES gamepads and NES and famicom support.

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?products_id=78


Recently I was gifted a NEW 3DS for the holidays and with many people that are new to the system I'm not sure what I should get for it. One of my favorite YouTubers Metal Jesus has a great 3DS buying guide that covers all the systems and some of the games you might be interested in.

One of the reasons I wanted a new 3DS is that it plays the newer 3DS and older DS games. I really think one area Nintendo shines is mobile games and being able to start collecting and playing DS games is something i've been wanting to do after the Gameboy and Advance. As we are approaching the upcoming era of the Switch it's a good time to pickup older DS games cheap while there is a fairly high supply and low demand so if you're interested, check it out.


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.


A few days ago I posted about a Kickstarter project to make a handheld system that can play retro games built on the Raspberry Pi. If you are interested in building the ultimate retro emulator to hook up to your TV pparently building a Raspberry Pi console isn't too hard and Gizmodo made an awesome video about it. You can even buy a kit that includes all the parts you need right now on Amazon for $70 while we are all waiting for that NES Classic to be back in stock. I don't recommend you pirate all these games but if you want a one stop shop to play all the games you do own, this is a great option.

https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-COMPLETE-Starter-Black-16GB/dp/B01EKBJ1I6/

Lifehacker also has a pretty good guide below if you need a step by step in text to read.

http://lifehacker.com/the-advanced-guide-to-setting-up-a-diy-game-console-wit-1790381861