jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2744 Posts

Chrono Trigger unceremoniously launched on Steam today and it seems the initial reviews of it... aren't great. Clipping out a few for your reading pleasure

"All you need to know is that this is a straight port of the mobile version, and includes a horrible font and disgusting sprite filtering."

"This is a port from mobile,
It only disappoints.
But Steam will refund
All my 15 silver points.
"

It's mostly all bad reviews but a few are positive.

"Chrono Trigger is one of the best RPG's ever made. I had it on SNES, then lost it. I am very glad it is finally on Steam. "

Chrono Trigger is one of the most beloved games of the 16 bit era and it seems like Square is releasing it's mobile ports directly on Steam which doesn't sit well with people because the interface isn't very well optimized for PC. Also it seems that the graphics this version don't upscale well compared to the amazing upscaling of the 16 bit graphics in any emulator. I view these kinds of releases the way I think of the Star Wars Special Editions. I don't care what they do to a modern version of the game as long as we can go back and play the original and in the case of Chrono Trigger we all can. In fact, I recommend the DS version or original SNES cart!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/613830/CHRONO_TRIGGER


Culturally Star Wars is a big deal and maybe the biggest deal in all of cinema. Mikey Neumann, a former writer at Gearbox that wrote Borderlands, recently went full time with his YouTube channel Movies with Mikey. It's a great YouTube movie review channel and well worth a subscription and his latest two episodes are about How We See Star Wars. Mikey breaks down each Star Wars movie starting with the original trilogy and how they were reviewed when they came out. Spoiler Alert, people didn't seem to like the Empire Strikes Back at first but later went on to think it was the best movie of the series. If you are looking to tear into some fun Star Wars commentary hit up part one above and then watch part two linked below. My only minor nit with both videos is that I wanted Mikey to go a bit deeper and take a bit more time but that's not really his style and it's good to keep things short and sweet.

I hope Mikey comes around to do a full episode on The Last Jedi because he only briefly talks about it and I think there is more for him to say.

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVgc6YlyjzE


I liked Star Wars: The Last Jedi a lot and will be heading to the store when it gets a physical Blu-ray release to pick it up on release day. If you were wondering when all that was coming out and wanted to plan your move to own it, i'm going to break it all down in this post to help make your choice a bit easier. And if you hated the movie, and apparently some people did, then doing nothing is even easier than that.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be available on Digital & Movies Anywhere March 13th and on 4K & Blu-ray March 27th. With that, if you want to own it digitally i'm not sure why you just wouldn't buy it on Blu-ray and redeem the digital code for the digital copy and own an actual thing. Like the digital code you get with the Blu-ray is the same and the price is about the same to so ... you know... why not? That said if you plan on buying an actual physical copy there are a couple of versions you might want to be aware of.

Target film-maker edition + Book + Porg exclusive Looks like Target is getting a Blu-ray exclusive edition with a special Porg behind the scenes thing. It also contains a pretty sweet art book that looks like Star Wars collector bait. It's not 4K but, to me, this looks like the premire edition of the film that i'll be getting on launch day. It seems like the Porg exclusive is digital only.

Best Buy 4K Steelbook Looks like Disney is working with retailers to get exclusive versions and Best Buy is selling the 4K steelbook. It contains the same special features as everything else.

Best Buy Blu-ray Steelbook I don't know, it's just the Blu-ray release with a special steelbook cover. I guess if this is what you crave you should get it.

The Last Jedi is getting loaded up with a bunch of behind the scenes features including 13 deleted scenes! Rian Johnson seems to really understand what I like from these releases and has loaded it up to the hilt with the goods. Read all about it and the special releases at starwars.com below

http://www.starwars.com/the-last-jedi

If you are looking for an in-depth breakdown of the special features Den Of Geek has a nice write up you can check out below.

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/star-wars/271098/star-wars-the-last-jedi-dvd-blu-ray-release-date-bonus-features-details

If you plan on picking up The Last Jedi let me know which version and where you plan on picking it up from!


When WarCraft III launched back in 2002 I was hooked. I played a ton of WarCraft II and as a fan I was really excited to play the next installment and WarCraft III's focus on heroes, amazing 3D graphics and the story made it one of my most played RTS's of that era. I believe WarCraft III is an important game and since many have been getting the remastered treatment it seems like Blizzard might agree.

"Warcraft III's PTR is back and ready for your scrutiny. Join us in testing widescreen support, hero balance changes, and updates to Map Pools for 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's and Free-for-All. We've also added some experimental modes like 24 player support for custom games. "

Getting widescreen support in WarCraft III is a great addition as the it natively only supports 4x3. Many people seem to think that these new rounds of updates coupled with the special WarCraft III invitational tournament next month mean that Blizzard is revving up to give it the StarCraft Remastered treatment. This certainly might suggest it and if that's the case them i'm in because this game is well deserving of one and it might give gamers that didn't play it originally another chance to do so.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20762056755


Capcom is releasing the Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 & 2 as part of a single release on the Switch which seems like a must buy for Switch owning Mega Man fans. That said, it's not all 8-bit perfection as it looks like Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 is the only release physically on the Switch cart as Collection 2 is a redeemable code. It's not a matter of size either, both games could fit on a single Switch cart. But beyond not putting all the games on a single cart the fact that we're getting Mega Man 1-6 and 7-10 in one release is awesome.

Oh and Capcom is adding a rewind feature to both games which looks like it will make getting past those tricky Mega Man areas much easier.

Let me know if you own a Switch and plan on picking this up on May 22nd.

I've reviewed the Mega Man Legacy Collection on the 3DS and it looks like most of that applies to the Switch version too beyond some new features.

https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3577/opening-thoughts-on-the-mega-man-legacy-collection-3ds


As I continue on with my playthrough of Chrono Trigger the game keeps getting a bit better each time. Since the game has been out for over twenty years i'm going to talk about some plot spoilers so if you are planning on playing this fresh, you might want to avoid reading more.

Firstly as someone that didn't play much of Chrono Trigger when it was originally launched on the Super Nintendo I don't have any particular nostalgia for this title. That said, the game does borrow some graphical and sound elements from past Square games, such as the wind sound effect from Final Fantasy VI. That said, I do have some pretty minor nits about the game and the biggest one is that it throws a lot of new plot level characters at you pretty quickly to the point that I was confused a few times. That said the game does stop adding new plot characters at one point which allowed me to catch up. I imagine if you've played this game a lot it's easy to make sense of all of it but Chrono Trigger is so quickly paced that it's hard to keep your finger on what's going on.

SPOILERS AHEAD. FOR REAL PEOPLE YOU CAN'T UNREAD THIS ONE BELOW

So I just got to the part in the game where Crono sacrifices himself to save the group when they are fighting Lavos. It's a surprising turn, which I didn't see coming and I am now working on bringing him back. It's an interesting choice to kill of the main character and for a bit I wondering if he would just be out of the game entirely? That said, since it's sci-fi the group already has a plan on how to bring him back of sorts which involves a Chrono Trigger, time egg and a replica doll of Crono himself. It's cool that the game is totally going all Search for Spock to bring him back and these kinds of moments are why Chrono Trigger is widely considered to be one of the best games of all time.

I'm not sure how much more I have of the game yet to play before "the end" but it feels like i'm at least half way or more through it. Playing the DS version has been great because I can play it anywhere and if you have the chance to play that version I highly recommend it. In the future if I want to play Chrono Trigger again I'll play the original Super Nintendo version but you can't beat playing it on the go so if you want to give Chrono Trigger a shot you can pick it up on your smartphone or DS.

If you want to read more about this playthrough of Chrono Trigger check out my other post below:

https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3594/chrono-trigger-it-s-about-time


Lizard is a brand new game made for the original Nintendo Entertainment System that was successfully Kickstarted and has now officially launched. You can check out the trailer above and download a demo of the game on Itch.io. The game demo is a NES ROM, Mac or PC downloadable and the game is available for purchase digitally on all those platforms + Linux. The Lizard developers will make an NES cart release and if you are interested in getting that when it releases you can sign up for an email list on the Lizard website.

The NES fan community is pretty strong these days and it's awesome seeing new games continue to come out for these older systems.

https://rainwarrior.itch.io/lizard
http://lizardnes.com/


If you are looking for a new game to play, EA is giving away Dead Space which is the first entry in the franchise that dropped back in 2008. Dead Space received great reviews and is already considered a horror classic by some people in gaming.

"You are Isaac Clarke, an engineer on the spacecraft USG Ishimura. You're not a warrior. You're not a soldier. You are, however, the last line of defense between the remaining living crew and deadly reanimated corpses. The undead have become Necromorphs; horrific zombie-alien hybrids that won't succumb to traditional means. Fortunately, your offense is equally unique, as the high-powered mining tools at your disposal provide the means to fight against the threat."

https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/free-games/on-the-house


Speedrunner SethBling recently figured out the first sub 1 minute credits warp for Super Mario World and made a pretty detailed video explaining how it works. Seth uses 4 controllers and by doing that it puts certain values in RAM pushing the game into the right state to get the credits.

Seth provided a detailed Google Doc below that details how you can route this run yourself and all things you need to achieve it such as the Japanese version of SMW.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cgr0jFw4AU8hF00JcQlOTRb8I1qPd-tF73LtTF4lzZE/edit
https://pastebin.com/V3EtvyGT


Analogue are the creators of the new Super Nt a moderinization of the Super Nintendo that looks to recreate it entirely in hardware. Thing is, most retro remake systems that allow you to play original NES, SNES or Genesis games often use emulation to achieve this which essentially does a ROM dump of the game to play it. The Analogue hardware developers have worked to create a FPGA Super Nintendo that reduces the emulation educed game lag to zero and allows the games to run at a crisp 1080p with authentic audio. At about $200 the system costs as much as the launch Super Nintendo back in the 90's and even includes a built in game Super Turrican. If you are wondering how it plays check out the Metal Jesus review above and if you want to know more how this machine came to be there is an incredible interview with the creator of Analogue on Polygon I've linked below.

Nothing beats the price and convenience of the Super Nintendo classic but as someone with a lot of SNES carts and counting these kinds of systems are pretty incredible.

https://www.analogue.co
https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/5/16965328/analogue-super-nintendo-super-nt-making-of