ChippyGaming is one of the most renowned Terraria YouTube video creators who over the years has been able to showcase exclusive game update spoilers and today has a new video that looks back at the Terraria 1.2 update. The 1.2 update changed Terraria forever and cemented it in my heart as one of the best games of all time. Not only did it come with a ton of new NPC's, the Crimson and more but it also came with ... the Bee update.

https://media.giphy.com/media/dcubXtnbck0RG/giphy.gif

"In today's video we give a recap of the one of the largest Terraria updates over the past 7 years. Terraria 1.2 turns 5 years old today and to celebrate let's take about it!"

YouTube Channel Noclip is fastly becoming one of my favorite gaming channels as it focuses primarally on longer form video game documentaries. Funded by a healthy Patreon, Noclip has created some great docs such as one I shared recently for The Witness. I've been sitting on sharing this one for a while and now seems like a great time with Doom Resurrection on the horizon. The first part of the series is embedded above called To Hell & Back and covers the original Doom game iD was working on before it was rebooted to become Doom 2016. They show off screenshots and gameplay and interview the original designer and developers about it. The second part Designing a First Impression covers how they went about building and designing Doom 2016 and the final installment Guns, Guitars and Chess on Mars wraps everything up to launch and does a deep dive with the composer of the music in Doom.

Needless to say this is a must watch if you liked Doom 2016 and even if you didn't play it and want to watch something interesting about a very cool game, i'd press play.

Part 2 - Designing a First Impression https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsoVQWnSOfM

Part 3 - Guns, Guitars & Chess on Mars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0nOsuaPDeg

Today we're launching a new game on the Cheerful Ghost Games BBS called Iceberg 2 Wrath of Don by Taylor Buchheit. If that name rings a bell it's because Taylor is 50% of the Game Devs Podcast, a local Podcast all about Indie game development. Taylor and I have been talking about the games he's been making and Iceberg 2 seemed like a good fit to include on our BBS lineup. It's a fun top down arcade styled game that harkens back to Robotron as you try to save an Iceberg from global climate change.

Find Iceberg 2 Wrath of Don at our Games BBS Link below or click the "Games" tab at the top of the page. We think Open Source is pretty awesome and as such Taylor was cool enough to release the source for Iceberg 2 on GitHub and you can find that on the Iceberg 2 link below under "View Source on GitHub."

https://cheerfulghost.com/games/iceberg2

I want to thank Taylor for letting us include the game on our BBS and make sure to checkout the interview below.

jdodson: Can you explain to everyone what Iceberg 2 is and your inspiration for creating it?

Taylor : I made Iceberg 2 as part of the 2018 Low Res Jam which constrains developers to using a 64 x 64 resolution. Iceberg 2 is the sequel to the first game jam game I ever made, Iceberg. In Iceberg, players look after a melting iceberg. Their only option is to continue watching it melt, or close the game, thus saving the iceberg from global warming. Iceberg 2 follow a similar premise, but this time the player controls a scientist who must collect carbon credits to combat climate change and heal the iceberg. His greatest foe, Bad Don, is chasing him around, attempting to corrupt him, denying that climate change is real and dooming our planet.

In our current political climate, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the blatant attack on science, and specifically on climate change. I believe that games have the power to move people, so making games with a message is really important to me. This game is a direct attack on climate change deniers and hopefully prompts players to think about the devastating effect that denying scientific evidence has on our planet.

jdodson: For any aspiring game developers, what tech did you use to create Iceberg 2?

Taylor : Iceberg 2 was made in the Pico-8 fantasy console. It's a really neat game engine that can run on just about any computer, including a raspberry pi, but still has surprising power. If someone is learning game development and wants to fully understand concepts like the game loop, how animations work, etc, I think it is a great engine to use.

jdodson: You and Rett partake in the Game Devs Quest Podcast, a show I listen to regularly. What's your favorite show you've recorded so far and has anything surprised you about how the show has progressed over time?

Taylor : This is a tough question to answer! At this time, we have released 80 episodes, so there are many to choose from. I really enjoyed when we first started the podcast because we were hyper focused on sharing our experience learning game dev; we always had something we wanted to share from the previous week's progress. As we continued, the podcast evolved into more of a show about Rett and I's friendship and all of the challenges that come with pursuing our passions. Lately we have had some great guest game developers, and that is always a blast and a great opportunity to learn from others.

A few episodes that are notable in my memory are Episode 26: One Percent Dota where we break down how much time we have spent doing things in our lives and the ten thousand hour rule, Episode 32: Shinkansen Edition where we recorded a podcast as we were riding a train in Japan, Episode 48: ManBeardGames where we talk to fellow gamedev ManBeardGames who teaches us the basics of shaders, and our most recent episode, Episode 80: Coffee with Butterscotch where we podcasted with the Coffee with Butterscotch podcast (one of our favorite podcasts to listen to). Overall though, it is really hard to pick a favorite because we have done so many episodes and have had so many great conversations (including several episodes with Jon Dodson of Cheerful Ghost!).

In terms of being surprised about our progress, I'm surprised that we have continued to produce an episode each week for about a year and a half. I never would have thought that Rett and I had this kind of dedication to this project, but after hosting 4 game jams that yielded hundreds of games, starting a Discord server that now has hundreds of active game developers, and meeting so many cool people with similar interest via the podcast and twitch streaming, it has become an extremely enjoyable and integral part of our lives.

jdodson: What are you playing right now?

Taylor : I actually don't play many games anymore because I spend most of my free time either making games or programming. Recently, however, I picked up Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and have been completely consumed. Growing up, I was a huge fan of the Commandos series, and Shadow Tactics feels like a Commandos sequel set in Japan during the Edo period. I love games that give me nostalgia, and this game definitely brings me back.

I've also been playing the Banner Saga, which was a little tough to get into at first, but is now very enjoyable. I love the hand drawn art style and the turn based fighting.

jdodson: Are there any game developers or companies that you look up to?

Taylor : One person who really inspired me to start making games is Eric Barone aka Concerned Ape, who made Stardew Valley. After playing that game and learning the back story behind how it was made, I started to believe that one person could make amazing games on their own.

Other notable game developers I look up to are the guys from Butterscotch Shenanigans, Chris DeLeon of Gamkedo, Christer Kaitila aka McFunkypants, and so many developers that are a part of our community. All of these developers have a very positive attitude, not just towards making games, but in regard to living a productive, fulfilling, and good life.

jdodson: Now that Iceberg 2 is out what are you going to work on next?

Taylor : My next big project is developing a website for the Game Dev's Quest community. I'd like a full blown web application where our members can interact in more of a blog/forum like fashion as opposed to a real time IM environment with our Discord server. After I finish that, I plan to get back to a mobile game called Logger's Road I had been working on for about 5 months. In the game, you own a logging business and you must manage your forest in a sustainable way to be successful.

jdodson: In Solo A Star Wars Story Han got his last name by way of an Imperial recruiter. Apparently because Han Solo had no family the Imperial recruiter wrote "Han Solo" on his application. So let's say in an alternate timeline you are the writer of Solo A Star Wars Story and you __HAVE__ to figure out a way Han Solo got his last name, what would that be? Remember a million nerds are counting on you!

Taylor : Oh, wow. See, Rett is the creative writer, not me!

How about this (I've gone through several different versions and all are terrible!): When Han joined the imperial fleet, he was a practiced marksman. He ranked top of his class with a blaster, hitting nearly every bulls eye in his weapons course exams. He gained the nickname "Solo" because, as his classmates said, Han only needed one shot per enemy. From then on, he ditched his real last name and went by Han Solo.

jdodson: Thanks for taking the time to do this, anything you want to say before we wrap things up?

Taylor : If anyone would like to get started making games, it is like anything else, all you need to do is make the decision to start and practice as often as possible. Pick an engine, stick with it until you've made a bunch of really bad games, and don't give up! If you'd like someone to help you stay motivated along the way, check out our podcast and our community. You can join our discard at bit.ly/gdqdiscord or follow us on twitter @gamedevsquest. Best of luck on your own Game Dev's Quest!

http://gamedevsquest.com/

During the middle run of the Playstation 3 I bought Oblivion used from Gamestop and up to that point it was the first time i'd seriously played an Elder Scrolls game. It was a fun open world game but like the recent LGR review of it, I didn't love the Oblivion gate sections either. All that to say, it's a fun game and the LGR review is a good overall retrospective of it and it's DLC expansions including the oft chided Horse Armor.

Since Cheerful Ghost has been rolling along happily for 7 years, make sure to read Greg's review from 2014 if you want even more Oblivion stuff to read.

https://cheerfulghost.com/games/167/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion

I remember the first time I saw the original Super Mario Brothers and that memory is burned forever in my brain. As Mario entered the pipe for World 1-2 and the color palette of the level changed to a darker tone, I was hooked. I've been playing Mario games since that point and quite enjoy that Nintendo is continuing to create games in the traditional 2D platformer style under the New Super Mario Bros. series. It started with New Super Mario Bros. on the DS and then then New Super Mario Bros. Wii and I finally picked up the 3DS version I'm playing now called New Super Mario Bros. 2.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 takes everything that worked about the previous games and continues to do that while focusing on coin collection. You have a running tally of coins you can collect that unlock things in-game making progression tied to coins and continually completing stages. The focus on coin collection means that I actually collect coins playing the game, something I've never really done much of in Mario games. This focus on coin collection and the game giving you many more opportunities to collect them means that as of World 3-5 I have over 106 lives! The New Super Mario Bros. series never felt too punishing but if you play the game like it intends and don't rush, it's not that difficult and YOU TO can have way too many lives in reserve!

So far New Super Mario Bros. 2 is Mario platforming at it's best but after playing the first two games in the series it doesn't feel as fresh as it should. I suppose the New Super Mario Bros. series should stick to basics but I feel more could be done here. Don't get me wrong, the platforming is some of the best in the series and getting the Raccoon suit back is incredible but so far.. it just feels like another fun game in the series. Which if that's what you are looking for, you're gonna find it in spades.

Today I found a three part video essay review and documentary piece by Lindsay Ellis and needed to share it. I found the Hobbit trilogy to be interesting yet had a rough time with aspects of it and Lindsay's review does a good job covering it and she does an epic deep dive on how it was made and it's complicated path to theaters. I don't want to spoil her review videos but I will say her series blurs the lines between review and documentary in a very unique way that elevates video reviews to new heights. For instance she travels to New Zealand to interview people involved in local cinema and were involved in the production of The Hobbit. One part I appreciate in Ellis's review is how she deals with duality and specifically how things can be both good and bad at the same time.

The first part of her series is embedded above and you can watch part two and three by hitting those links below.

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Studios (Part 2 / 2) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPJr_tKkO4

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Warners (Part 3/2) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7t_g5QObs

Scene is a dimly lit arcade. Camera follows arcade cabinets and three hip 80's kids playing Captain Commando fanny packs and all.

Kid 1: "Man I love beat em ups wish you could play this at home!"

Kid 2: "Yeah but there is no way this would fit in your house.""

**PORTAL OPENS AND CAPTAIN COMMANDO STEPS OUT AND NODS (THAT HAIR)**

All Three Kids: "CAPTAIN COMMANDO!""

Captain Commando: "So you kids want to see a future where an arcade fits right under your TV."

Kids: "YEAH!"

Captain Commando: "Then come with me to 2018!"

**KIDS RUN THROUGH THE PORTAL**

So I don't want to spoil the rest of the video but it's basically the best video game ad I've ever seen selling one of the most impressive Capcom collections on Switch called the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle. Basically it's a $20 digital Switch collection featuring seven arcade games such as Final Fight, Captain Commando, The King of Dragons, Warriors of Fate, Knights of the Round, Armored Warriors, and Battle Circuit. At $20 it's an insane value and so far it's only coming state side as a Switch downloadable. The games and price make total sense and honestly it seems like a steal at $20 but i'm wondering if it's gonna get a physical release because i'd love to own a cart copy of this. I've heard that it got one in Japan so here's hoping one comes in time for the holidays!

I encourage you to do two things. Firstly watch the whole video and then tell me what you think happens afterward. It's one of the coolest/darkest endings to an ad and I've been wrestling with how I think that's gonna actually turn out. Oh and while you're at it let me know if you plan on getting the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle.

The Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle is out now on PS4, XBox One & the Switch and the Steam version coming soon!

Because Nintendo made a ton of money doing it and fans loved it Sony is releasing the Playstation Classic this December featuring 20 games such as Final Fantasy VII, TEKKEN 3, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, Jumping Flash! and Wild Arms. Looks like the mini system is very similar to the NES and SNES classic in that features game saves, HDMI output and faithful recreations of the original controller. The difference here is the base unit + 20 games + controller is more expensive at $100 and that's not a bad value at all if these games are something you are looking to re-play. So far Sony has only released details of 5 games on the system with more information to come up till the final launch. One thing I like about this system is that the controller ports are USB and the base system looks like you can just plug it in where your NES and SNES Classic units already sit under your TV.

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/playstation-classic/

When I launched Cheerful Ghost in 2012 I built something that solved a problem I had. It wasn’t easy to collect all the games you owned in one digital list that you could share and write about. You could write on Facebook but none of that sticks around, Twitter isn’t a great place for conversations and no one cares if you start up yet another game blog. To me Cheerful Ghost set out to bring the discussion with my friends to one place where we could talk about the games we loved. Over time we started The Cheerful Ghost Roundtable that later became the Cheerful Ghost Radio Podcast, we published Starship Rubicon on Steam and this year launched the Cheerful Ghost Games BBS. Recently I got the itch to create something new and I’m excited to launch The Video Game Site Webring!

As I was reading The SNES Omnibus by Brett Weiss I noticed that he included a lot of great game quotes from sites i'd never heard of. As an independent game site creator I realized that a tool to help discover independent and lesser known sites would be useful to the larger game community. In a couple days I hacked out a prototype and started collecting a list of game sites. I decided to model the base website on old 90's Webrings and Stumbleupon. The final site is what we are launching today and you can find it at http://vgw.io.

The Video Game Site Webring makes discovering new video game sites fun by randomly taking you site in our list. Over time we plan on adding even more games to the list and if you know of any, let us know. The Video Game Site Webring aims at making the discovery of niche gaming sites easy and fun. We’re purposefully NOT including the top gaming sites like IGN and Kotaku because we feel these sites get enough attention. The goal of VGW is to give focus to smaller site and have these site link to VGW so we can all benefit from the increase in visibility. Part of the launch today is to give attention to these sites but over time I’ll reach out to these sites and see if they can all link to the VGW to help give everybody a boost. This is the core tenant of a webring and I hope, over time, VGW catches on. Also bringing back old stuff from the 90’s like Webrings is pretty cool too.

On last important thing but the Video Game Site Webring is that it is entirely open source and available for anyone to look at and modify on GitHub. I felt this was an important part of this project so everyone could see the source code and know how it worked and change it if they wanted. Cheerful Ghost has benefited from Open Source and it’s cool to create new projects that might be useful to others too.

I want to thank Travis for helping on this project and Brett Weiss for writing The SNES Omnibus which was a big inspiration for this project.

http://vgw.io/

My review of the SNES Omnibus by Brett Weiss

https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3829/hop-aboard-the-snes-omnibus-for-a-fun-ride-around-video-game-land

View the VGW source code on GitHub

https://github.com/jdodson/vgswebring

Nintendo just dropped one of the most impressive Nintendo Direct's today answering the question of what's coming next to the Switch. Animal Crossing, Luigi's Mansion 3, Yoshi's Crafted World, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles port, Final Fantasy XII remaster, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX, and X/X-2, Katamari Damacy Reroll, Civilization VI as well as New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe which is New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe making one of the stinger console lineups moving into 2019.

Nintendo also dropped more details on the first batch of games to come bundled with it's online service such as Baseball, Balloon Fight, Dr. Mario, Donkey Kong, Double Dragon, Excitebike, Ghosts 'N Goblins, Gradius, Ice Climber, Ice Hockey, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Bros., Pro Wrestling, River City Ransom, Soccer, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Tecmo Bowl, Tennis & Yoshi's Cookie. Travis and Tim should be pretty stoked to be able to have Ice Climber so easily accessible anywhere they go, I know I will. Seriously though, it's a great list of games and looks to add some missing games from the NES Classic something that people can't seem to get enough of. Nintendo's Virtual Console might be dead but adding free games atop the online service is really awesome. I'm curious if these games will rotate out for new ones of if the library will just become massive over time making the Nintendo Online subscription even more compelling?