The Evercade is an upcoming retro handheld that improves on the sea of off brand handhelds in that it supports officially licensed retro collections you can purchase on collectable game carts. Evercade also worked with many prominent emulation developers to bring an extremely similar experience to the original hardware. DF Retro examines the system and gives it a solid review score comparing it to original and best of breed recreation hardware.

The Evercade price point seems solid at $80 for the main unit or $100 for the base unit and three pack in game collections and $20 for each game collection. For quite some time I've hoped we'd get a brand new retro system that you could make physical games for and this seems to be the answer. It makes sense that this would start out as a handheld and I appreciate it has an HDMI out to play on the television.

https://evercade.co.uk/

If you are looking for more on the Evercade check out Metal Jesus review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHOchWVYe-E

Looks like Super Mario Maker 2 is getting its last big free update and it’s incredible. Folks thought we’d get a new Super Mario 2 theme and they didn’t quite add that but we did get a SMB2 mushroom which looks to add those mechanics to the game.

“ A free update to Super Mario Maker 2 for the Nintendo Switch system adds a new World Maker mode, as well as a host of new content and features on April 22.

In World Maker mode, multiple courses created by a user can be tied together on a path from the starting point on a world map to the end castle. The look of the world map can also be customized. Up to eight worlds containing a total of up to 40 courses can be combined, creating a mini Super Mario game that can be shared* with others.

In addition to World Maker, guess who else is making an appearance in Super Mario Maker 2? The Koopalings! All seven of these troublemakers, each with his or her own movement pattern, can be added to user-created courses. Other enemies added to the game include the key-chasing Phanto and the wind-up Mechakoopas.

Additional power-ups and course parts are also coming to Super Mario Maker 2 as part of the free update. This includes the SMB2 Mushroom, which transforms Mario and friends into their look from the Super Mario Bros. 2 game and allows them to pick up and throw items and enemies – just like in that classic game! With the Frog Suit from the Super Mario Bros. 3 game, Mario can swim through water with ease, and even run across its surface! Other power-ups added to the game are the Power Balloon first introduced in the Super Mario World game, the Super Acorn from the New Super Mario Bros. U game and the Boomerang Flower from Super Mario 3D World. There are also five variations for wearables like the Cannon Box and Propeller Box from the Super Mario 3D World game.”

We have been wanting to change the fight run mechanics for quite some time, and recently had time to simplify how it works. Before these changes, the fight run mechanic was needlessly complicated and allowed you to run away essentially every time. Iif the run attempt was unsuccessful, you could just try again without consequence, so with enough patience in spamming run, at some point you'd run away and suffer no ill consequence of hitting it a bunch of times.

We just pushed up a change to the fight run mechanic in that you have a random 1 in 4 chance to successfully run. If your run attempt fails, you take half the incoming damage or at least one damage from the enemy. This means that you can take damage from running away and could possibly die.

Before this change, the Mage Teleport spell was a spell few used; it would always take you out of battle, but running was free, would accomplish the same thing. We believe the update to run will give players more reason to choose Mage, and to buff Mage a bit further, Teleport now costs 3 MP (down from 4) and Healing now costs 7 MP (down from 8).

As always we look forward to your input and would love to hear what you think in the comments.

Digital Foundry has another incredible review of Doom 64 up on YouTube and as with most of their coverage, you need to watch it. As the interview unfolds they bring in some really fun perspectives of the Nightdive developers working on this port. Nightdive studios doesn't just emulate these old games but ports them brining new features and enhancements to old games giving them a level of love and polish games like Doom 64 deserves.

"In a DF Retro exclusive, John Linneman talks with Nightdive Studios about the process of bringing the classic, totally original Nintendo 64 rendition of Doom over to the current-gen platforms. In this video, you'll see what made the original release so fascinating, while Nightdive staff tell all on how the game was reverse-engineered and delivered on current-gen platforms. Oh - and is this the first 1440p Xbox One S game?"

Hope all of you are having a safe quarantine. With that I was curious what everyone was up to while we are all locked away in our houses. Since I have a 4 year old most of my weekend time is spent with him but I have been making time to play some Super Nintendo Classic and focusing on Earthbound and Star Fox. I nearly beat Star Fox yesterday but Andross shut me down on my last life.

Jack Black: Dude it's getting biblical talk about the mark of the beast!
Sammy Black: It's about hell.
Jack Black: Dude is Satan in this game?
Sammy Black: Uh, not exactly Satan.
Jack: No spoilers.
Jack: Sumpin' tells me we gonna battle Satan!

It's a Jack Black playing Doom Eternal. Just click the button already.

If you come to Cheerful Ghost from time to time you have noticed that share all manner of video game videos and documentaries. One documentary channel on YouTube I quite enjoy is Noclip, a YouTube channel that creates excellent video game documentaries constantly. Their latest deep look is at Obsidians latest Triple A hit The Outer Worlds. It's a fun peek at one of the coolest takes on the Fallout formula and well worth a click.

"In the first video exploring the design of The Outer Worlds, we sit down with Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky to discuss how a team of fewer than 75 developers collaborated to create their sci-fi RPG."

The COVID-19 pandemic is in full swing and most of us are housebound doing what we can. If you are finding yourself with a bit more free time to play some games and the want to donate to charities that can help fight COVID-19 The Humble Bundle is here!

"This special one-week bundle features $1,071 worth of games and ebooks for just $30. 100% of the proceeds from your bundle purchase go to support organizations responding to COVID-19. For example, delivering protective gear to safeguard healthcare workers and providing medical care to infected patients."

The charities you will be supporting are Doctors without Borders, Partners in Health, Direct Relief and International Rescue Committee.

This Bundle is HUGE with 45 games and 23 books give or take. If you are curious what some of the amazing Indie Games you can play are such as Into The Breach, UNDERTALE, Hollow Knight, Wizard of Legend, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, The Witness, SUPERHOT, Tilt Brush, LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Killing Floor 2, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered, Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition, Darksiders Warmastered Edition, Sniper Elite 3, This Is the Police, The Jackbox Party Pack 2, Stick Fight: The Game, Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, Party Hard, Worms Revolution, Europa Universalis IV, Tropico 4, GNOG, Broken Age, Brütal Legend, Psychonauts, Double Fine Adventure, PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2, Pikuniku, World of Goo, Super Hexagon, VVVVVV, Hacknet, A Mortician's Tale, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, Magicka, Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville, Agents of Mayhem, DUCATI - 90th Anniversary, Speed Brawl, HIVESWAP: Act 1, Alien Spidy, Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones, LostWinds and Zombotron!

https://www.humblebundle.com/conquer-covid19-bundle

There were a lot of games announced for Switch in the latest Nintendo direct and I wanted to highlight that 2K games is bringing some essential classics such as The Bioshock Collection, Borderlands Legendary Collection: includes Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and The XCom 2 Collection to the Switch on May 29th. The good news is these versions will come with a physical game releases but they are so large that they couldn't include everything on the 16 gig game cart.

I love Borderlands and had fun playing it on the PS3 and hopefully the Switch version is faithful to these games. As they don't require the most cutting edge of hardware hopefully they hold up well and I'm looking forward to the Digital Foundry reviews to see more.

Anything else interest you in the latest Nintendo Direct?

From Kotaku:

"According to a press release from 2K Games BioShock: The Collection will come on a 16GB cartridge that only contains the “opening acts” of each of the three games with the rest needing to be downloaded. They don’t say just how big that download will be. On PS4 it’s about 60GB.

XCOM 2, meanwhile, comes on an 8GB cartridge that will only have the first two missions in the game installed. To get the rest you’ll need to download up to 24GB more.

Finally, the Borderlands Legendary Collection will require an additional 41.6GB download to fully play. For reference, the Switch only comes with 32GB of internal storage."

https://2k.com/en-US/blog/borderlands-legendary-collection/
https://kotaku.com/bioshock-borderlands-and-xcom-are-coming-to-switch-1842507828

I'm going to be writing a few posts about games I'd otherwise not be playing but decided to because we're all now to shelter-in-place and you know, fuck it, might as well get to some cool games.

One game I've had my eye on for quite some time is Risk of Rain 2 as I __really__ enjoyed the original game on PC. That said, with a kid and a developer day job sitting yet again at a desk on a PC for fun isn't always a super hot idea so playing games on the Switch is much more appealing. I've considered picking up Risk of Rain 2 on the Switch and wasn't sure because it's a third person shooter and had doubts how well that might work out on a controller(I prefer a keyboard and a mouse just like your Grandpap). When I found out they included the original Risk of Rain on the Switch game cart as a bonus I decided to pick it up. I've wanted to play the original Risk of Rain again on the Switch and felt that getting it for about twenty dollars AND Risk of Rain 2 was too good of a deal to pass up.

Thoughts on Risk of Rain 2

Well see, I don't have any strong thoughts yet as I've not really played it. But I bought it and the Switch box it came in looks great, so it has that going for it. And when you put the Switch cart in the system both games magically show up, which seemed like some kind of Nintendo Wizard magic.

But I HAVE played a lot of the original Risk of Rain on Switch and yeah, that's still fun as hell. It's as if Risk of Rain was meant to always be on that platform as it's perfect in handheld and on the TV.

I've heard Risk of Rain 2 is incredible and it sits at a rating of A REALLY HIGH RATING(So scientific of me I know, but go look, i'm not wrong) on each platform it's on. I figure I'll keep playing Risk of Rain on the Switch like a troglodyte and some day I'll get to Risk of Rain 2.

But at I have the box and as I said, the art looks great so you know, I'll always have that.