jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

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

2757 Posts

The Greatest Ninja Turtles Game Collection Brawls It's Way to PC And Consoles This Year!
The Ninja Turtles video games are some of the most iconic retro arcade and console games around. As a young lad I spent way too many quarters playing the Ninja Turtles Arcade game and later got Ninja Turtles on the NES. NES Ninja Turtles, I'd argue, is a good game that's incredibly difficult. Still, I played it so much I made it to the Technodrome a handful of times but never could quite complete it.

Now that the new Ninja Turtles brawler Shredders Revenge has blown up the gaming scene with a lot of interest it seems Konami is looking to keep that going with the release of The Cowabunga Collection featuring 13 classic Ninja Turtles games including the Ninja Turtles Arcade Game, Turtles in Time, SNES Tournament Fighters, The Hyperstone Heist and The Manhattan Project. This is even getting a physical release at launch so if you looking to add this to your game collection, you can. And with a $40 launch price tag that's about a dollar a game so why not?

The thirteen games coming in the collection are:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)

https://www.konami.com/games/tmntcollection/

DF Retro Goes Deep On The Splatterhouse Series
Splatterhouse was always one of those games that was so absolutely gory, so disgustingly vile I could never get my parents to let me rent it. Needless to say I never really played it until it came on a Namco Arcade pack my friend Will gave me his extra copy of on Switch. Splatterhouse looks like a mindless arcade game that might have leaned to hard on the shock horror vibe and less on gameplay but that's far from the case. Not only is Splatterhouse on arcade incredibly fun to play, it's controls are really top tier and in some ways, outshine classics such as the first Castlevania.

Steam Deck Launches To Incredible Reviews!
The Steam Deck has finally started shipping to nearly universal praise. I think they only downside to the Steam Deck I've heard of is that if you play hefty graphical games at 60fps the battery life doesn't last very long. Valve has some toggles to downscale games to get more battery life, but if you can only get an hour or two from any modern intensely graphical game.

To date, Valve has released some innovative hardware that hasn't quite achieved mainstream status. The Steam Deck seems like it might be the magic hardware that a lot of gamers may get. That said, if you signed up for the Steam Deck late in the game it might take you a long time to finally get one. Let me know in the comments if you plan to pick this up or if Valve's latest hardware won't be something you get.

**Update: I'll drop coverage of the Steam Deck in the comments I find interesting so check that if you want**

The Bethesda.net PC Launcher Takes An Arrow To The Knee
https://i.imgur.com/8WpTrDk.jpg
Bethesda sent out an email to all of it's PC launcher (think Steam but only Bethesda games) users about the service being shutdown this year. I'm wondering if this move is part of the fallout from the recent Microsoft acquisition as Microsoft already has a storefront and they are also very happy to use Steam as a platform alongside it. In a PC landscape where each large publisher builds it's own bespoke launcher it's nice to see some consolidation. Steam is the clear leader in the PC landscape so I don't love seeing everything move to one service entirely, I also don't mind seeing my Bethesda.net games move over to it.

Goodbye Bethesda.net PC launcher, we barely knew before ye!

You can read the whole email Bethesda.net sent to it's players below:

"We’re saying goodbye to the Bethesda.net Launcher this year. We would like to thank you for your support and assure you that all of your games are safe. If you’re not playing PC games through the Bethesda.net launcher then your work is done here. Thanks for reading! If you do have games through the Bethesda.net launcher, don’t worry. Starting in early April you’ll be able to migrate your games and Wallet to your Steam account. For more details on what this process will look like, read on.

You have plenty of time to plan and begin migrating your Bethesda.net library to your Steam account. The migration to Steam will include your game library and Wallet – meaning you will not lose anything from your Bethesda.net account. Many games will also have their saves migrated, with a few requiring some manual transfers. For games that require it, you will still use your Bethesda.net login to sign in to play. Your Bethesda.net account will not be lost and will still be accessible on our website and in-game, and we will continue supporting all Bethesda.net accounts with our future titles.

NEXT STEPS

In early April, you will be able to initiate the migration process following detailed instructions we will have available to you then.

We expect you to have a lot of questions and encourage you to take a look at our comprehensive FAQ. For those of you looking for questions specific to Fallout 76, we also have a Fallout 76-specific FAQ on Fallout.com.

Until May, you will still be able to access and play your games on the Bethesda.net Launcher, but we suggest that you start the migration process as soon as it’s available. "

https://bethesda.net/en/article/2RXxG1y000NWupPalzLblG/sunsetting-the-bethesda-net-launcher-and-migrating-to-steam

Splinter Coming To Ninja Turtles Shredders Revenge
Splinter is coming as a playable character to Ninja Turtles Shredders Revenge with the original Turtle Team and April O'Neil! I hope they announce more characters you can play, personally I'd love to play as Casey Jones. That said, I imagine they might release more characters later on as DLC depending on how the games does but it would be nice to get a hefty roster at launch too.

What characters would you like to see join up?

Hotline Miami Creators Break Down its Design & Legacy
Hotline Miami is one of the best indie games to come out in the last 10 years and if you wanted to know more about it's development NoClip has released a documentary about it. The retrospective covers both games in the series along with the critiques of Hotline Miami 2.

The Latest Nintendo Direct: A New Portal Collection, You Monster!
The latest Nintendo direct brought some great news for Switch fans. One new game collection to be announced was quite a welcomed surprise in the Portal: Companion Collection. Basically it's just as it sounds, Valve is releasing the Portal & Portal 2 Companion Collection on Nintendo Switch. My hope is this has a physical release, because if it doesn't i'll pick it up. I still play Portal and Portal 2 with my 5 year old son on the Series X backwards compatibility and getting a new fresh port on Switch would be awesome. My hope is Valve releases this collection on the other consoles in 4K but if this is simply a Switch port, that seems fine too. It's an interesting choice considering Valve is launching it's Steam Deck handheld broadly very soon.

The next news drop I found interesting was the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass DLC. Mario Kart 8 was originally released in 2014 for the Wii U with it's own DLC. That later was packaged up for the Switch as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and the game is still so popular with fans Nintendo is releasing a 48 course DLC track pass that will drop 8 new tracks at a time throughout 2022. For $25 this seems like quite the deal and Nintendo has also included it as a bonus for the upgraded Nintendo Online subscription. Interesting to see how Nintendo is adding value to Nintendo Online through normally paid DLC being included for subscribers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uZDbDoDAq4

Nintendo Switch Sports looks to be the sequel to Wii Sports I always wanted. Recently my son played Wii bowling at he was hooked. Nintendo Switch Sports looks to bring all the Wii classic sports games to the table along with some of the best games from Wii Sports Resort (the Sword Fighting game). Switch Sports drops 4/29 and it's a day one purchase for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ16-1YIRAc

Finally, Earthbound Beginnings on NES and Earthbound for SNES are coming to Nintendo online, which should bring these classic games to a larger audience. While a bit late, it's nice to see these come to the system even if I'm letting my Nintendo Online subscription lapse.

Majora’s Mask Plays Africa
🎶

It's The Time For The Great Video Game Company Aquisition Fest of 2022!
Microsoft is acquiring Activision for 69 billion, Take Two acquired Zynga for 13 billion and just today word broke that Sony acquired Bungie for 4 billion. I'm not sure how I would have guessed 2020 would start but it wouldn't be with some of the biggest tech acquisitions.

I can't really speak for Take Two, but generally speaking I don't mind these acquisitions as I'm hopeful Microsoft would do well with Activision/Blizzard and I'm not sure there would be much of a change with Sony acquiring Bungie beyond us getting more games from them. With that, consolidating all of the main game franchises in a handful of companies isn't great and I wonder how long multi-platform gaming will last? It used to be that the majority of releases were multi-platform but it seems those days are sadly numbered.

https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/10/take-two-to-acquire-mobile-gaming-giant-zynga-for-12-7b/
https://www.ign.com/articles/playstation-sony-buys-bungie

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Comes To Our Galaxy April 5th!
I wouldn't have guess that one of my most anticipated games on 2022 would be a Lego game but it's a Star Wars game so I suppose it's not too surprising. Truth is, I've played a handful of Lego Star Wars games and to date I've found some to be good and some to be not great. From the look of this, it seems developer Traveller's Tales has built an entirely new Lego Star Wars game including each movie from the Skywalker Saga and really make them look fantastic. Which is, most likely, why the game was delayed into this year because ... The Lego Skywalker Saga looks massive.

I'm not sure this game will be a day one purchase for me as I have questions about how unlocking character and such will work. Can you unlock all the character easily or will they be annoying out of reach behind loot boxes? I don't mind buying characters through DLC but if a game has a lot of that I usually wait a bit to pick it all up for a bit less than the typical $99 deluxe launch price point.

All that said, the game looks great and something that my five year old and I will enjoy playing together. Is Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga something you are interested in and at what point are you going to play it?