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.

2746 Posts

So You Want a $60 NES Remake? This Is For You.
http://media.nintendo.com/nintendo/bin/rvaGP1R78V5tN2-ig3qnxUlroQyOVrLC/MPjZT3HGVICYbOecOb7k_h9bqvPd0j7j.jpg
Nintendo is launching a NES reboot that will embed 30 classic games into one small new system. It will ship with one controller but supports up to two of them using a few options.

"You can even enjoy playing several of these games with two players by attaching a second NES Classic Controller, which will be sold separately at a suggested retail price of $9.99. A Classic Controller or Classic Controller Pro can also be used (each sold separately)."

The NES Classic also connects to your TV over HDMI which is great considering most of these old system-in-one remakes usually ship with the old analog video ports making them not work on newer TV's and also look bad.

“We wanted to give fans of all ages the opportunity to revisit Nintendo’s original system and rediscover why they fell in love with Nintendo in the first place,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition is ideal for anyone who remembers playing the NES, or who wants to pass on those nostalgic memories to the next generation of gamers."

The NES Classic ships with most of the top games on the system, many I don't actually own including:


  • Balloon Fight

  • BUBBLE BOBBLE

  • Castlevania

  • Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest

  • Donkey Kong

  • Donkey Kong Jr.

  • DOUBLE DRAGON II: THE REVENGE

  • Dr. Mario

  • Excitebike

  • FINAL FANTASY

  • Galaga

  • GHOSTS’N GOBLINS

  • GRADIUS

  • Ice Climber

  • Kid Icarus

  • Kirby’s Adventure

  • Mario Bros.

  • MEGA MAN 2

  • Metroid

  • NINJA GAIDEN

  • PAC-MAN

  • Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream

  • StarTropics

  • SUPER C

  • Super Mario Bros.

  • Super Mario Bros. 2

  • Super Mario Bros. 3

  • TECMO BOWL

  • The Legend of Zelda

  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link


    • I believe the NES Classic will be a really accessible way to play these classic games and may open them up to a new generation that might not otherwise have played them. The news of this new system has spread like wildfire over the Internet and Nintendo was asked by one publication if the NES Classic would support other game karts. Nintendo was very clear that these games were built in and you couldn't add more later. Makes sense why they'd do this, but part of me wishes that Nintendo was going to release a retro system that could accept a USB drive with a modern pressing of a NES game on it as crazy as that sounds. That said, I bet this will be hacked on day one and there will be some guide showing you how to load more stuff on to this.

    I plan on picking this up as I've said before, some of these games I don't actually own and would like to such as The Adventure of Link and Super C. I hope this system improves some of the failings of the NES games on the original Wii as if you had your Wii connected to your Widescreen TV in 16x9 mode it stretched the NES games to fit the 16x9 resolution which made them very awkward to play. I also hope they don't apply any filters to enhance the image and if they do make all of that selectable so I can turn it off. I really do prefer playing these games in all the pixel glory and don't like all the modern smoothing effects as it makes the games look really bad.

    That said, this looks to be a perfect Christmas present as it will launch to retailers on November 11th. Will Santa Claus be dropping one of these off at your house or are you going to skip this entirely?

    http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/relive-past-glories-with-nintendos-ultimate-retro-gaming-experience

    Watch Someone Play The Whole Half-Life 2 Beta
    Quite a few years ago, before Half-Life 2 launched, someone hacked into Valve's systems and stole the source code for Half-Life 2 and leaked a copy online. Gabe took to the Internet and asked for help in tracking down those responsible and later with the help of the FBI the hacker was caught. I recently watched a video that shows off the Half-Life 2 beta and it's a complete run through of the game at that point from start to finish. As you can see the story is a bit different as is the gameplay and art. It's interesting to see Half-Life 2 in such an early form compared to what it was when it launched(the final version being much better in my opinion).

    http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Half-Life_2_Beta

    Morgl the Oracle Hero Comes To Hearthstone If You Can Get a Friend To Play
    Today Blizzard dropped a new Hearthstone update that added a cool new Shaman hero, Morgl The Oracle. Morgl is available to earn in game if you refer a friend to Hearthsone and they make it to level 20. After you earn Morgl and have more friends sign up you can get a free pack for four more friends.

    It's a cool new system and the new hero looks really fun so if you have been thinking about trying Hearthstone hit the link below and you will get an extra free pack when you sign up!

    https://battle.net/recruit/7LRFP7JLGW?blzcmp=raf-hs&s=HS&m=web

    You can read the full set of patch notes below:

    http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20177158/hearthstone-update-july-12-2016-7-12-2016

    Try These Two Cheap Hearthstone Warrior Decks
    If you're like me you play Hearthstone but are free to play or don't spend much therefore you don't have every card. This means you need to work within a constrained gold(what you earn from dailies) and dust budget. This isn't too bad, but at times can seem like you don't have options to play with fun decks but recently I've found two decks that are really good and can be created fairly easily. The first decknis called "Disneyland Warrior" and is featured in the Kripparian video above. It's essentially a Zoo deck that only contains Warrior commons. Like many Zoo decks, this decks works becase you can keep pumping out cheap minions on curve to win. It's one of the only decks that runs Gurubashi Berserker which can get huge if you play things right.

    You can watch the video above for the decklist and see the one on Hearthpwn below.

    http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/560481-disneyland-warrior
    http://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/624-gurubashi-berserker

    The second deck is Pirate Warrior, a deck i've mentioned before but want to highlight again because it's not hard to make and swashbuckling fun. You can swap out Reckless Rocketeer for Leeroy Jekins and Sylvanis Windrunner or another Arathi Weaponsmith for Captain Greenskin. The pirate synergy makes for some crazy turns and huge weapons that love to go face. Hearthstone streamer Trump has a series on him creating a free to play account and trying to make Legendary with a Pirate deck very similar to this one so if you are also interested in how to make the deck work and do it free to play, you can start the series with the YouTube link below and continue on until you learn the basics of the deck and how to build it.

    http://www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/legendary-pirate-warrior-aggro-rush-standard-deck
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aJOBlClZXg

    Have fun!

    Watch 64 Floppy Drives Play The Star Wars Main Theme
    The Floppotron is an impressive creation built from hacked floppy drives and other old PC hardware to create musical tones and then made to work together to recreate the Star Wars main theme.

    Can General Solo get these people a medal?

    "How does it work? The principle is simple. Every device with an electric motor is able to generate a sound. Scanners and floppy drives use stepper motors to move the head with sensors which scans the image or performs read/write operations on a magnetic disk. The sound generated by a motor depends on driving speed. The higher the frequency, the greater the pitch. Hard disks use a magnet and a coil to tilt the head. When voltage is supplied for long enough, the head speeds up and hits the bound making the „drum hit” sound. The disk head coil can also be used as a speaker to play tones or even music, but… that would be too easy and too obvious.

    Every column of 8 floppy drives is connected to one 8-channel controller built on ATMega16 microcontroller. One controller acts as one voice with envelope simulation – the higher the volume, the more drives are playing. This allows to make ADSR-like shape and simulate a musical instrument, like a piano (exponential decay) or string instrument (sine, vibrato).     "

    We Finally Have A Good Picture Of What Happened To StarCraft: Ghost
    http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/0/0d/SC-G_Logo1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080508203154
    Polygon has a really great article that covers the history of the infamous Blizzard game StarCraft: Ghost. Ghost was a game that was aimed at consoles and featured stealth gameplay starring the Ghost character Nova. I remember hearing quite a big of buzz about the game and as with many upcoming Blizzard games, I was really interested in playing it. Eventually Blizzard stopped talking about the game entirely and then we found out the game wasn't in active development but never properly cancelled. Up until now we didn't know much as to why the game was scrapped but Polygon has a very well written article that covers the story of Ghost from conception to it changing hands to an entirely new team.

    "The story of StarCraft: Ghost is a complicated one that spans two development studios, a buyout by Blizzard and declarations that, even though no work was being done on the game, it was never technically canceled. Polygon recently spoke with nine developers involved to look back at the project.

    "StarCraft: Ghost was in the wrong place at the wrong time," says James Goddard, a fighting game veteran who worked on Ghost for years.
    "

    http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/5/11819438/starcraft-ghost-what-went-wrong

    Mighty No. 9 Stands Trial In The Latest Episode Of Innocent Until Proven Guilty
    Recently Mighty No. 9 launched to very mixed reviews. Some Kickstarter backers didn't get the correct game codes for the platforms they pledged to and many more experienced some unfortunate game glitches at launch. In one of his latest videos, Cygnus Destroyer runs Mighty No. 9 through the Innocent and Proven Guilty courtroom and I found his verdict fair. As a fan of the original Mega Man series I had high hopes for Mighty No. 9 but I had mixed feelings about picking it up until I saw this video.

    Starbound Finally Leaves Orbit To 1.0 July 22nd!
    http://playstarbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/sb_releasedate_facebook.png
    Chucklefish is finally releasing Starbound 1.0 coming July 22nd. After making a huge early access splash, Chucklefish hit a few snags with some pretty large delays and as such garnered some community backlash. I am happy to see the game finally hit this milestone and as such am really eager to play it in it's final form.

    "In case you missed it, Starbound is coming out of Early Access on 22 July, 2016.

    After ~5 years, the game we set out to make finally exists, and to say that it all feels a bit surreal would be a massive understatement!

    While Starbound will be finished in two weeks, this isn’t the end. We will continue to update and support Starbound for as long as we can. We’ve got loads of cool ideas we couldn’t fit into 1.0 but hope to put into future updates.

    Thanks again for all your support over the years! You’ve stuck with us, and it means so much.    "

    Today I Learned Diablo Was Released On The Original Playstation
    After Diablo became a huge success on PC, Blizzard partnered with EA to port it to the original Playstation. This bit of retro knowledge wasn't something I was aware of until I saw RetroSnow's recent review of Playstation Diablo. From his review, the port seems to be very well done if not a bit dark in certain levels. It's nice to see Diablo III make a strong comeback on modern consoles and if you have a PS3, PS4, 360 or XBone I seriously recommend you download the Diablo III demo to see how well it plays.

    The History Of Doom
    I recently found a video that catalogs the history of Doom and also briefly discusses iD Software. I've posted videos before talking about iD Software but this is a bit different in that it mostly covers Doom, it's origins and the most recent Doom 2016 installment. Not a huge amount of new information here but if you don't know the story of Doom, this is a very good way to get it.