Legend of Zelda Sundial of Shadows is a VERY unique fanimation set in the Zelda universe. They totally nail the feel of Zelda for me and each frame evokes dat nostalgia. That said, if you are turned off by more art house or Anime, then this isn't your jam.

Episode 2 is a nice continuation of Episode 1 but doesn't spend time following the events of episode 1, it takes a step backward and provides a bit more back story. It reveals little, but allows the viewer to see a bit more of the universe it so eloquently builds. I like the style of this series quite a bit and can't wait to see it unfold a little bit at a time.

I recommend you watch episode one:
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1031

Street Fighter X Mega Man is one of those games that leaves me between a head scratch and a high five. One awesome thing about this games is that it is getting a deluxe physical release on a sweet USB drive.

The chances I pick this deluxe version up and VERY high and if I do, ill let you know how it turns out. If you are interested in what comes with the deluxe USB release for $19.95:

* 8GB Mega Buster USB stick
* Mega Man #1~4 (Digital Comic Book)
* Mega Man Tribute Art Book (Digital)
* Mega Man X Complete Works (Digital)
* Street Fighter X Mega Man soundtrack (via A_Rival)
* SFxMM Wallpapers (Originally posted on Unity)
* Quick link to SFxMM game (in case you somehow don't have it)

http://www.capcom-unity.com/brelston/blog/2013/02/28/mega-man-usb-buster-on-sale-soon-packed-with-goodies

I am really excited to bring you guys a few new features today and as such wanted to talk a bit about them. So here goes...

Interviews: Interviews are becoming a big part of Cheerful Ghost and some people were having a hard time finding them. I added the interviews to the menu to give them more visibility and showcase more of what we do.

Anyone on the site can add "Interviews" to their list and contact a person or company in gaming to post. When I started the site I had never given an interview before and after a few, was able to make them great. So if you had an inclination to do an interview with someone about your favourite game or game company, I urge you to go for it. If you need some advice, drop me a line as I am happy to give you suggestions or help you out in any way I can!

Memberships: This is a really exciting new feature for the site because it enables quite a lot of awesome. First off, it allows people the ability to donate to the site if they wish. The second thing it allows is for people to back Cheerful Ghost as Members. If you decide to back the site as a Member you get a whole pack of awesome stuff and over time will get even more! I don't want to talk too much about what's coming next, but suffice it to say your membership will get sweeter over time.

What you get now is pretty epic and I wanted to talk a bit about that. First off, if you donate or back the site as a Member you are supporting Cheerful Ghost in a way that will keep the site going for a long time to come. If you donate or back the site as a Member you also get a special trophy for your awesomeness, but we take it a step further as each person that backs the site is featured in the new section called "The Hall of Awesome."

The Hall of Awesome is a new site feature that will showcase people that donated or backed the site as a Member until the end of time(or nuclear apocalypse, I can't keep the site up during a nuclear event). You are listed under the year you donate or become a Member and will always be listed under that year. As a special bonus for Members we allow them a much larger Hall of Awesome mention and the ability to customize it with whatever you wish to say. Forever immortalize your wit for future generations of Cheerful Ghost fans!

For people that donate or back the site as a Member we will also upgrade your user titles to Haunt and Ghost respectively. We are also allowing Members the ability to customize their tagline to 140 characters, up from 80.

Oh right and everyone that becomes a full member will have all the site ads removed as well. There are also a few more features available, but you can read all about them in the Membership section:

http://cheerfulghost.com/membership
http://cheerfulghost.com/awesome

I am excited to see these new features drop and am happy they are out because I can focus on the next set of awesome stuff we are doing in March. I don't want to spoil the next big move, but its quite a lot of stuff you guys have been asking for and will love.

I want to thank everyone for hanging out on Cheerful Ghost and talking about awesome games. Working on the site has been one of the coolest things I have done and it wouldn't be awesome without you!

If you have any questions, drop me a line in the comments!

Starbound is a really exciting looking upcoming open ended sandbox in space. You can read some of my thoughts about it here as a primer:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1020

Recently the Starbound folks have released The Starbound Chronicle: Issue 1 that highlights some of the recent activities in how the game is progressing. In this issue they talk a bit about how in game Armor mods work:

"The effect of armor mods varies hugely. From armor that glows in the dark, to armor with a built in defib that activates if your energy bar is full when you die, shocking you back to life."

The game seems to be taking a turn to allow the game world a bit more depth by allowing the in game races quote a bit of back story.

"Another area of the game we've been focusing on recently is fleshing out the history of each race in Starbound and building a deep and compelling lore.

Starbounds lore is presented to the player through books, logs, papers and other materials found in the game world, as well as conversations with NPCs who will change what they say based on your race."

They end the Chronicle with a few emails from the community and drop news on a in John McCain race. At least its not something to do with cats I suppose.

Very excited for Starbound to drop and as soon as they post anything about release dates you will be the first to know.

http://playstarbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/starboundchronicleissue1.html

After seeing some really cool 8 bit bead creations at a the Portland Retro Game Expo this summer, I decided the world needed a Cheerful Ghost. Spending a bit of time on it here and there I created a process to build the Ghost magnets and I think they turned out pretty well. Right now I am testing my latest magnet adhesive strategy on my fridge and these particular prototype revisions are holding up well.

Stay tuned over the next month for information on how you can put one of these awesome Ghosts on your fridge!

As browser technology advances I am really surprised at the level of awesome games people can create using HTML5. Take Bombermine, a new Bomberman clone that works from any modern browser. It plays as well as the 4 player version I had on Super Nintendo but Bombermine throws the crowd capacity of the Internet into the mix.

Dueling with someone Bomberman style from different parts of the world is a pretty awesome thing and occasionally as I was playing things got a little frantic. The game is in beta right now but the multiplayer rosters seemed quite full so there should be no problem finding people to throw bombs at. At one point I found a mystery item that turned me into Kenny from South Park. I couldn't drop a bomb but if I touched another player they would become Kenny for about a minute too. An interesting debuff as the only thing you can do as Kenny is evade others or... be killed.

You should check out Bombermine because of nostalgia and because you wanted to blow things up, if only for a few minutes at least.

**update** Looks like Bombermine has been rebranded as Game of Bombs.

http://gameofbombs.com

"We've been working on a little something, different from our other games, and we're pleased to invite you to be the first to see it," the company wrote in its e-mailed note. "It's not a sequel, expansion or that rumored next-gen MMO, but it's something we're excited for you to get your hands on."

I wonder if this is what Jay Wilson left the Diablo III team for? Some are speculating this is the previously mentioned Titan MMO. If past Blizzard announcements are an indicator, then the game will launch about 4 years after the announcement(D3 was announced in 2008).

So what do you think, is this the new Titan MMO or something entirely different?

Either way, we will know March 22nd!

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/blizzard-set-to-debut-something-new-at-pax-east/

As I make my way across the expanse that is the great plains of the Internet, occasionally I find some interesting bits that peak my attention. Consider one such project in Minetest, an Open Source implementation of Minecraft in C++. Since Free Software is close to my heart, I decided to give this project a spin. Well that and its free so, you know, its not hard to try it out :D

The Minetest project has binaries available for Windows and Linux and I tried the Windows copy. After opening the game up I noticed right away that they kept the overall feel and tone of Minecraft. The graphics are nearly identical and the controls are very close. Minetest misses quite a lot of Minecraft's polish, but isn't too far away from the game proper. I think the most compelling part of Minetest is how far along it is and that you can nab the code and hack on it yourself. If you are interesting what it would take to recreate Minecraft in C++ you can obtain the source and find out!

I have heard Notch say that at some point he plans on making the source to Minecraft available but until that happens, this is the next best thing.

http://minetest.net/

I consider the original Unreal Tournament games to be some of the best FPS multiplayer games ever made. I played the heck out of Unreal Tournament and then later went nuts for Unreal Tournament 2004. Now mind you, I am not very good at competitive shooters but Unreal Tournament allows you a fine grained control over bots such that anyone can get in the game and feel like a total bad-ass. I own UT, UT2003 UT2004 on plastic discs but when the recent UT franchise Steam Sale hit, I decided to pull the trigger and pick it up.

Unreal Tournament 3 Black is a worthy successor to the Unreal Tournament legacy. The Steam version includes the UT3 Titan Pack, which adds in a few new game modes as well as maps. After I downloaded and installed all the UT3 Community Bonus Project maps I tore through a few awesome maps and had a ton of fun playing Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. The awesome thing is that UT3 was released in 2009 so if you have a relatively new computer you can run it with the settings dialed up and the game doesn’t suffer from any kind of lag.

The game is very polished and overall a very good competitive shooter. I decided to try my luck and head online for a few deathmatches and was surprised to find out I wasn’t too bad. I imagine many people picked up UT3 from the recent Steam sale and were about as good as I was because I scored right smack in the middle out of the pack on the server I was playing on. The community for UT3 is still pretty strong and there seemed to be a few servers that were full of people playing.

Let me know by way of posting in the comments if you have UT3 and would be potentially interested in a Cheerful Ghost UT3 frag night in the upcoming months. Unreal Tournament has as special place in my heart as an awesome shooter and UT3 is a really awesome continuation of that awesome legacy.

If you are just getting started or want to head back into the area, you should nab all the awesome Community Bonus Pack content:

http://cbp.beyondunreal.com/

Very interesting new fan animation released recently called "Sundial of Shadows." The first episode features two characters and takes its time building up the tone and feel of the series. Styled heavily on Zelda Ocarina of Time, the series forgoes voice acting for the text style of the game.

Very interesting start to the series and as such am looking forward to where the show is headed.