Anodyne was the Indie Zelda-like released in 2013 that was a fan favorite on Cheerful Ghost during that time. I love the game so much we did a couple interviews with the studio that made the game(linked below). They released a follow up to Anodyne called Even The Ocean to great reviews and recently dropped news of an Anodyne sequel Anodyne 2: Return to Dust. It looks to harken back to the Nintendo 64 3D era which really works for the tone of the game and feels like a proper Anodyne follow up.

For me Anodyne wasn't just an awesome Indie game it also contains one of the best game soundtracks around. I listen to it still and the music is so iconic to me it sort of transcended the game itself. The trailer has the main Anodyne theme playing but it's a new take on it and I can't wait to hear all the new tunes and play the new game when it drops in 2019!

https://sean-han-tani.itch.io/anodyne-2

https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1557/even-the-ocean-the-upcoming-game-from-analgesic
https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1019/interview-with-the-creators-of-anodyne

When the last Hearthstone expansion The Witchwood dropped I opened the free packs and played the single player content. The single player missions were quite fun and if you completed them with the Witchwood quests you could get a few more free packs to open. I didn't open a ton of Witchwood cards but the single player stuff was fun enough to keep me playing daily. Then one day turned into another and I was back playing Hearthstone each day grinding dailies for gold. A while back I left Hearthstone because I was tired of the grind but things seemed fresh and playing it was fun again.

For the last month there was a special time event where they gave everyone a free arena run, made the quests easier and included dust and gold rewards for dailies. That free arena run was the best i've ever had and the deck I made took me to 7 total wins. Since i'm not a heavy arena player I thought that was a really reasonable showing as a perfect arena run is 10 total wins. Throughout the time I was playing Hearthstone I never looked up the current meta decks to see what the best decks to use were. I simply built my own decks based on cards I had and what I liked to play and what was good enough. One of my favorite classes to play is Hunter and I love beast decks so most of the time I was playing with a Beast Hunter sort of mid range deck and did really well with it. I played each day until the special event ended and the old quests came back and the daily grind just didn't seem as fun. I hope they bring back those special quests because, while easy, they changed up how I played the game. It wasn't about winning, it was about winning quests around really fun and stupid stuff like "Play 3 Dragons" and "Summon 20 1 cost minions" or "Summon 20 battle cry minions." Easy sure, but fun and why does grinding for daily gold have to be a chore?

The next Hearthstone expansion has been announced and the game is still just as expensive as ever and I plan on playing the new content but I don't think i'll stick around as long as I did for The Witchwood. Happy to have fun in Hearthstone again but getting back into the game again proved to me that the base grind is still around and still not something I want to do a lot of.

Rage 2 was one of my most anticipated games out of E3. They teased a Rukus The Crusher talking head and it looks like it's a thing you can buy with the upcoming collectors edition. It doesn't seem to steeply priced at $119 considering it comes with Rukus, the base game on the platform of your choice(as long as it's only three systems) and a steelbook case, a collector’s poster, an exclusive mission, & wasteland wizard cheat codes. There's also a bit more DLC included such as a monster truck, an armor set, and the... BFG. Looks like all pre-order versions of the game get the "Cult of the Death God" exclusive mission, settlers pistol, Nicholas Raine armor, and a monster truck but the Collectors Edition gets a little bit more.

I'm not quite sure how i'm going to play Rage 2 but you can get it for the normal or more... enhanced price.

Rage 2 gets really angry on PC, PS4 and XBox One the Spring of 2019.

It's that time again for a new Hearthstone expansion and this next one looks like a lot of fun and it's called The Boomsday Project. Doctor Boom is an old Hearthstone Legendary card that was one of the most overpowered in the game before he was rotated to wild. He's back and in his own expansion that looks like it fuses explosions with Hearthstone SCIENCE! Speaking of fuses a new mechanic MAGNETIC is for Mech cards allowing MAGNETIC cards to fuse to other mechs giving them the stats and abilities of the MAGNETIC card. It's a lot like Deathstalker Rexxar's Build a Beast ability but for mechs which looks to be very interesting.

A side note... the Hearthstone team is getting really great at making very fun videos showing off expansions and this one is the most entertaining to date. I'd recommend checking it out just for fun even if you don't plan on playing the game.

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/expansions-adventures/the-boomsday-project

If you have Twitch Prime head over to Twitch now to collect on all the free games you can! Amazon Prime is a pretty big day and since Amazon bought Twitch it's now partaking in the festivities giving away a ton of indie games for Prime members such as Metal Slug 3, Broken Age, Brutal Legend, Tacoma, Next up Hero and Qube 2.

With all the free game giveaways on Twitch by having Twitch Prime I have an ever growing Twitch catalog. Curious if Twitch is going to position itself as a competitor to Steam, GOG and Origin as it's already ramping things up to become an interesting digital store.

https://blog.twitch.tv/get-ready-for-the-biggest-game-giveaway-in-twitch-prime-history-52e55aba19eb

Metal Jesus got his hands on the new RetreoN 77 Atari Remake system and put it through the paces. The whole retro console remake market is pretty hot and this system seems to have a nice light footprint starting out at about $70. That said, it's not perfect and it seems RetreoN is having issues with the controllers in the first run. That said if you are looking for a good way to play your Atari games in HD this is a solid option.

"PROS:
Runs real 2600 cartridges (approx 99% compatibility)
720P HD output
Supports original Atari joysticks and paddles
Toggle 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio
Super long controller cable
Looks nice

CONS:
Joystick may break during heavy use
Doesn't support more than 18 ROMS
Slight video/audio lag because of software emulation"

This years Summer Games Done Quick was one of the best i've seen to date I think a couple reasons for this is that there are a lot of great new speedrunners running awesome games and the Games Done Quick team is better than ever. This years charity was Doctors without Borders and it's a cool thing to consider that Games Done Quick is the biggest single funding event it has and this year was a blowout with 2.1 million raised! If you want to relive the entire week you can stream it all on the Games Done Quick YouTube page or just check out the runs i'll highlight here. I wanted to talk about a few now and will create a few more posts in the upcoming weeks.

Final Fantasy VI Glitchless 100% Speedrun by puwexil in 6:53:00 The final speedrun that closed the event was by Puwexil and was 7 hours of pure Final Fantasy III/VI awesomeness. Since it's a glitchless 100% run Puwexil runs the whole game as quickly as possible while getting each character. It's worth watching and I know you don't have 7 hours to watch it in one go so piecing it out a bit over time seems like a good way to watch it all.

Video embedded above.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D by gymnast86 in 1:32:35 Majora's Mask is a game on my list of shame and I plan on picking it up to play this year. That said, I watched the first half of the run and it shows off why this game is one of the most beloved in the series. I stopped watching because I didn't want to spoil the whole game but if you've played it before coming back to watch the 3DS port is well worth it as it's one of the best ways to play and watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pejFW9W_yM

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Undead Campaign by CovertMuffin If you haven't watched a CoverMuffin run you should because he's a lot of fun to experience. Later on in the event he was one of the people reading off donations and did a great job doing that. He's a fun personality and his knowledge of WarCraft III is immense. Come of the WarCraft III stay for CoverMuffin's laugh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhISmAF6ASw

The Legend of Zelda Race of LackAttack24 v beetea v Eunos in 36:20 Last year I woke up early to catch the Legend of Zelda race and this years was just as fun but didn't require me to wake up at 5am. It's a great race and each player is quite good. That said, a clear winner emerges by a pretty impressive time and 36.20 is a great run!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo0LVPu2QIM

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Bingo by Runnerguy2489 in 1:13:06 One new format for running Ocarina of Time that came to this years GDQ was Ocarina of Time Bingo. Basically you start the run with a bingo board and the runner picks a sequence row or column and tries to run it as fast as possible. You need to know the game and all of it's skips and exploits well to get a good speedrun of the format and Runnerguy makes it look easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVu7WWpjWnU

Wanted to wish all the stateside Ghosts a very happy Independence Day. Drop off what you’re doing in the comments and enjoy the national feast of hot dogs!

This might seem like an odd topic for Cheerful Ghost but as we are all lovers of film the discussion seems useful. Cheerful Ghost has a booth at Portland Retro Game Expo each year and as a way to make a few bucks to help cover the booth cost and a stab at doing something a bit unusual we sell VHS tapes. I've been a light collector of VHS for the last couple years and selling tapes at the booth was a natural progression of that. All that said, I recently found a video that takes a second look at the home video format and VHS specifically. It's a great video and I think many of the points are spot on as some films really are better suited to be watched at home rather than in a theater. The video uses the example of Kevin Smith's Mallrats and Clerks and I totally agree.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is an upcoming game for the Switch and 3DS that you can play a demo of right now on both systems. It launches on July 13th but we know quite a bit about it already and from what we know it looks like a great Wii U port. Digital Foundry reviews the new Switch and 3DS demo and compares them to the original Wii U version. Some good news is that the Switch version ups the resolution from 720p => 1080p a really nice improvement. The Digital Foundry video mentioned that the Wii U capped most games as 720p as I figured they'd be 1080p but it seems the Switch is a much more powerful system.

Nintendo keeps brining the amazing Wii U ports and in this instance they also are bringing it to the 3DS. It's cool to see the 3DS keep being supported and Nintendo is talking about a possible successor to it. I'm open to a new DS but as with most things Nintendo, it's a surprising rumor to hear as I figured they'd be focusing on a Switch only future.