Interstellar is a new sci-fi epic by Christopher Nolan about a crew of astronauts that travel to space to find a new home for humanity. Christopher Nolan is a great director and I usually enjoy his films and Interstellar was no exception. The story, cinematography, acting and score are all top notch and really showcase a director at the top of his game. If you love hard sci-fi you need to watch Interstellar.

When I really enjoy a film I buy it. I typically watch movies I love many times over and I also like scouring over the extended scenes, outtakes and behind the scenes features. I usually buy films on Bluray as digital copies don't usually provide extras, commentary tracks or the ability to loan to a friend. The Interstellar Bluray had a cool feature where they would clip out an IMAX film cell to include with each Bluray package. It's a cool addition for fans of the film and makes sense when you consider that Christopher Nolan is one of the few remaining film makers that insist of shooting on reels of film and not digital. There is a larger debate in cinema on the merits of film VS digital and if you want to go into that more, I recommend Keanu Reeves amazing documentary Side by Side. Needless to say I don't have a preference but I think Nolan does have a look to his films that other directors don't and I imagine shooting on film is one of the components of that.

When I heard that Interstellar included an IMAX frame from the film I was interested in getting something featuring the machines Tars or Case. That said there are a ton of great scenes in the movie and any of that would have been great too. When I got the movie I was excited to see what frame I would get and opened it with gleeful anticipation. Nothing could have prepared me for the massive disappointment of opening it up and finding out I got a frame of the baseball scene. Now the scene was good and made sense in the film and I have no problems with it at all and quite enjoyed it, it's just that.... A BASEBALL PITCHING FRAME FROM A SPACE MOVIE???? *Sigh* Massive first world problems disappointment.

Most movies don't release a film cell with the Bluray so adding it is a pretty unique thing and I am actually pretty happy to have an IMAX frame at all. Still, I think I would have preferred a main character looking like a derp instead of a frame of someone pitching a baseball. That said, this IMAX frame will go up on my bookcase of nerd treasures and it's still pretty cool to have even if it is a baseball pitching frame from a space movie.

That said, if anyone buys Interstellar and is upset that they didn't get an IMAX frame from the baseball scene I have a high quality frame I would be willing to trade for just about whatever else you've got.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_%28film%29
http://sidebysidethemovie.com/

RetroLiberty's Shauntendo64 reviews the Super Mario Brothers 3 hack, Super Mario Bros. 3 remix. This is a game that I am interested in playing as it mixes elements from Mario 2, 3, Super Mario World, Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine all on the Mario 3 engine. It's a great review and the ROM hack looks like one of the more creative fan versions of the game.

I guess Blizzard likes me because I have four more beta keys to giveaway. This time I am giving preference to long time Cheerful Ghost users. So if you want a key, hit me up in the comments and i'll send it your way!

With the Cheerful Ghost Games Club playing Half-life 2, my recent play through of The Legend of Zelda and now Donkey Kong Country I have been having a good time just playing through the classics. It's been really fun but as i've been reliving these games and often times I noticed things I hadn't before. With Donkey Kong Country and my recently play through of it may have tainted my perspective on what I used to think was a perfectly constructed game. Don't get me wrong, the play control, music and tone of the game are still unmatched but the game has some pretty huge glaring issues I never noticed before.

The biggest problem the game suffers from is that it gets it's difficulty simply by making certain levels so hard you need to memorize them to complete them. For instance, there is a minecart level that is so hard, i'd argue the majority of it is impossible to complete without completely memorizing where everything is located. This reliance on memorization was pretty common for old games but doesn't make it any less cheap. I would say a good platformer can be challenging but not so brutal you simply just need to burn it into your muscle memory to complete it.

Another sticking point with me and this game is that the difficulty is so varied as well. The game goes from a pretty even difficulty for the first level to a massive brick wall in level two that will leave your head spinning.

All that said, Donkey Kong Country contains some of the best platforming mechanics on the Super Nintendo. It contains some incredibly beautiful graphics and music and I really enjoy the in game bonus stages and banana collection. At the end of the day i'd still consider this a classic, but it's so cheaply brutal it's legendary status dropped a few pegs.

I thought this recent episode of Game/Show was well worth sharing as it covers an arena of gaming I mostly just watch with awe. A good speedrun is pretty magical and it's been a joy to see how quickly people can complete games like Ocarina of Time, which seems to be the current speedrun gold standard.

"Speedrunning! The competitive genre of choice recently that’s popping up on Reddit, Twitch, Youtube, and basically anywhere you can watch video. Recently popularized by people like Cosmo through his run of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, speedrunning is becoming the next big thing (and possible foil) to most games’ competitive scenes. Instead of doing your best to play by the rules, you break them! You try and beat the game as fast as you can in an exhibition of wit, reflex, and raw talent."

A new Terraria 1.3 trailer was released today that is no joke. The video shows off people joining a game using Steams match making service. Before, you had to set up a server if you want to play a quick game with your friends. From there it's a frenzied battle on what looks to be a Martian themed event.

Terraria 1.3 looks like it will be the biggest update ever, which is impressive considering how massive 1.2 was.

I've been feeling pretty horribly recently after coming down with the flu for the second time this year. Having the flu is a miserable process during which you find out how much unfortunate material can come out of your nose. I've been spending quite a lot of time resting and have had a few hours of time to fill. I've wanted to replay some classic NES titles, something Travis inspired me to do after he started his recent series 80's reruns(looking forward to the next installment). I decided to not cut any corners and head back to the grand daddy NES classic The Legend of Zelda. I am not going to spend much time aggrandizing the game, we all know how awesome it is. Instead I want to talk a bit about how I play the game and how that process went this time around.

First things first, The Legend of Zelda can be completed quickly if you have a good guide or know what you are doing. I spent about 5 days of an hour here and there and I had it completed quickly. As someone that is now enjoying smaller games, The Legend of Zelda shines here. I don't believe Nintendo set out to create a short game but due to NES limitations the game isn't very long.

The Legend of Zelda is an open world game such that you can complete certain dungeons out of order and spend a lot of time in the overworld before you start dungeon one. My typical play through finds me collecting the blue candle, shield, blue ring, blue sword, bombs, arrow, letter and red potion and bait before I start the first dungeon. When I was young I used to go directly to dungeon two to get the silver boomerang as that was MUCH more useful than the wooden one you get in dungeon one. From there I'd nab the bracelet and keep going to each dungeon until I could nab the master sword.

One useful thing that helps out quite a bit is overpowering yourself by collecting a bunch of stuff when you have the ability to as opposed to a bit at a time. The game ramps up pretty quickly in dungeon 6 and at that point you can't get the master sword yet so the dungeon is just really hard. So do yourself a favor and get everything you can before you enter a dungeon, it will help considerably.

The Legend of Zelda contains some really interesting dungeon design. The first few dungeons are good at dropping you into the game and to my taste get a little samey during the middle runs until dungeon seven, eight and nine which are superb. Dungeon seven is a standout in that instead of giving you something entirely new as most of the dungeons did to that point, it combines many things you've already seen. It also takes the difficulty down and I found it a very nice change of pace. Dungeon 8 brings the difficulty back and enforces that you must kill room after room of blue knights, which are in my view the hardest enemy in Zelda until you get the red ring.

http://www.gamedynamo.com/images/galleries/photo/966/the-legend-of-zelda-nes-screenshots-09.JPG

The final level mixes things up even more by bringing maze like mechanics to bear. It also contains the red ring, something you should immediately try to get as it makes completing the rest of dungeon much simpler.

The Legend of Zelda is a great game but has a few design points I thought might not have worked as they may have intended or I haven't seen in any Zelda game since. For instance you can collect keys and those keys will work in all of the dungeons. You can also purchase keys in shops. The Legend of Zelda also has dungeons where you don't need to visit every room to collect the important items. What this has the effect of doing is giving you a glut of keys if you know which rooms are useless. For instance, after dungeon two I had about 6 keys. This meant that I had to spend little time collecting them in later dungeons, which is part of the Zelda puzzling mechanic. Later on you receive a magical key in dungeon 8 that allows you to unlock an infinite amount of locked doors. This is handy for dungeon nine and made it a much speedier process but practically speaking, you can get this behavior after dungeon two by hoarding keys.

One element I noticed this play through is how hard it is to hit enemies without taking damage yourself. I realized over time that one of the reason the boomerang exists isn't just to collect hard to reach items but make it so you can kill enemies without taking as much damage as you would otherwise. The stun first and sword attack is critical in this game as it isn't in later Zelda titles. For instance in The Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past the boomerang can be used to stun and it's useful but it's not as critical as it is in this game to stay alive.

If you have any thoughts about the Legend of Zelda or anything i've written about let me know in the comments.

The Humble Indie Bundle is back with it's 14th-ist Bundle yet! Featuring the Indie smash hits Pixel Piracy, UnEpic, Outlast, Torchlight II, La-Mulaa and Super Splatters. Pay more than the currently $10 average to unlock Shadow Warrior Special Edition and if you pay $40 you get a neat shirt, patch and scarf. I've always wanted a scarf.

As per normal all the Humble Indie Bundle games come with Linux, Mac and Windows ports DRM free as well as Steam Keys so you can unlock it over there.

I've been interested in trying Pixel Piracy, is this the right time to pull the trigger?

A free update recently dropped in the laps of all Legend of Dungeon fans. The game finally gets some cool new unlockable classes including pets! Getting more build diversity sounds like a good move as it will give the game even more replayability.

If you follow the site you are aware that we are all pretty excited about Steam Machines and the Steam Link. I've mostly been tuning out the other stuff because, to date, nothing has seemed as compelling as buying a game in one place on Steam and playing it anywhere I want.

With that, last week I found out about the upcoming Nvidia Shield Console that is a $200 high powered Android TV device that supports in home streaming and Nvidia's new Grid service. Using Nvidia's in home PC streaming you can broadcast your Steam games to your Nvidia Shield console. Steam Machines and the Link do that too but what is interesting is the Shield console runs a full blown Android TV system which supports Chromecast streaming, Android TV apps including Pandora, Netflix and Hulu. It's also not hard to unlock Android TV to install other apps on it. So if you are looking for a system that does a bit more out of the box AND handles Steam game streaming this might be something to put on your radar.

That said, the Nvidia console option does come with one negative in that it weds you to playing all your PC titles to use Windows as Nvidias streaming only works on Windows PCs. Steam in home streaming can stream from Mac, Linux or Windows so you can fling whatever Steam game from whatever OS it may run on.

http://shield.nvidia.com/console