AtGames, the current keeper of the Sega Brand and games is releasing a new console next month that aims squarely at the success of the NES & SNES Classic called the Sega Genesis Flashback HD. Sporting an 85 game lineup, 720p HD, wireless controllers and the ability to play Sega Genesis games and use your old controllers it's a pretty interesting prospect. It's just that... well... it's not reviewing very well.

Kotaku gave the system and resounding "meh" while Kotaku basically think's it's terrible. How is it actually? I'm not sure, but it's a compelling system with actual Sega Genesis playback and the 85 included games is a compelling prospect. I think i'm going to wait for some Amazon reviews of the system before I decide to pick it up but if it even has average reviews I think the value might be right.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/13/16051258/sega-genesis-flashback-hd-review
https://kotaku.com/sega-genesis-flashback-hd-the-kotaku-review-1819380165

Ben Paddon is back with another episode of Ports Center looking at what I consider to be the highlight of the series, Final Fantasy VI. He concludes that the best port of the game is the GBA version, which I agree with him on except the music. Most things on the GBA version are superior including the graphics, translation as well as the addition of extra dungeons and items but the music isn't as good as the Super Nintendo version due to the limitations of the GBA sound hardware. One fix for this is to play the FFVI GBA version with a SNES Music ROM Hack, which i've done and it significantly improves things.

Final Fantasy III is included on the SNES Classic and that's a good version of the game too and frankly I kind of like how strange the old versions translations were. I'm torn between which version i'd come back to play though as I will be playing my SNES Classic in December and i'd love to run through FFIII/VI again on it.

"In this episode, we look at the porting history of the Final Fantasy series -- these are games that seem to find their way onto almost every system, but it almost didn't happen! Ben explains why..."

Somehow I got this tape in sent to me in the 90's and I loved it. It really got me excited about Donkey Kong Country and as such the hype was so real I bought it. After I played and beat the game about a zillion times I came back to watch the tape and it never really hit me the same way after playing the game. As time passed I ditched the tape, which in hindsight wasn't a great idea but my young self didn't really realize that kind of thing might be useful to keep around someday. Nor that i'd be collecting VHS tapes 20 years later.

The Donkey Kong country tape video embedded above is 17 minutes of 90's Nintendo at the height of it's power and majesty. The video is extremely dated and as such totally cringe worthy including that TOTALLY X-TREME HOST. But that was a big part of that 90's "Bart Simpson rebel cliche" character that was so TOTALLY IN YOUR FACE as the host is trying to do! Plus this is a good video to study ways to overuse Digital Toaster effects because you can.

Makes sense that DF Retro's longest episode to date covers Doom, one of the most important games ever made. In this nearly hour long opus DF Retro talks about each Doom console port and how they nearly all relate to each other. He also talks about the Doom console ports history, limitations and playability.

"id software’s Doom played a key part in gaming’s transition from two to three dimensions, and its legacy of technical innovation continues to this day. On this episode of DF Retro, John explores its origins on the PC before comparing and contrasting this against every official console conversion. There's a lot of ground to cover so buckle up for the longest episode of DF Retro yet."

I can't strongly recommend this video enough if you love Doom and want to dig in to an interesting part of it's long history.

Do you have a hole in your gaming life that needs to be filled with Borderlands? Do you love endless RPG's and want something else to play? Humble Bundle has just the thing for you in the new Humble Endless RPG-Lands Bundle featuring: $1 Tier (Borderlands. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut, Wurm Unlimited), $4.97 Tier (Borderlands 2, Endless Legend - Classic Edition & Guild of Dungeoneering) & $10 Tier (Borderlands the Pre-Sequel). And for a couple bucks more you can get both Van Helsing game Soundtracks, which is a nice bonus.

I can't say enough great things about Borderlands beyond the reality that I keep coming back to play these games over and over and plan on doing that for many more years to come. I can't vouch for the rest of the games but they seem to be well worth looking into.

https://www.humblebundle.com/endless-rpg-lands-bundle

Awesomenauts is a really fun 2D sidescrolling take on the MOBA genre that hit things pretty hard when it launched and has been getting massive updates since. This year it went entirely free to play and now is getting a huge update making freemium game progression easier and giving people more things to do.

Brawl of the Week

This latest update also introduces Daily Missions. These missions challenge players to complete matches with a specific type of character, to claim victory in a certain number of matches, or to fulfill another objective. The reward for completing these missions? Sweet, sweet Awesomepoints that players can use to purchase additional characters or unlock other cosmetic upgrades.

Daily Missions

In addition to these new gameplay features, we’ve also further refined the experience for players who are new to Awesomenauts. To welcome these new players into our community, we’re providing them with new features that help them predict the effective range of their abilities, and are providing them with a set of daily missions that help them explore the various features Awesomenauts has to offer. We're sure many of these changes will also benefit veteran players who are experimenting with newer characters or returning to the community.

Awesomenauts is one of the more accessible MOBA's i've played and if you are looking for a fun free game to play with your friends online or at a LAN, you really can't go wrong with it.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/204300/announcements/detail/1469721435682506733

The new Star Wars The Last Jedi trailer dropped and it's great. It's a bit darker and way more edgier than I was expecting. As I was watching the trailer Luke looked... really on the edge of a breakdown or maybe it's the fact that he's been living as a hermit for a while?

What do you think? I've been watching the new Star Wars movies on opening night for the last 2 years and I plan to do the same here too.

"You fulfilled your mission. It will revive peace in space. But, it may be invaded by the Metroid. Pray for a true peace in space!" - Ending screen text to NES Metroid.

Even back in 1986 Nintendo was opening up Metroid for a sequel. It's also kind of strange/fun to see a Nintendo game talk about praying for peace. Who does Samus pray to for peace and what is her belief system? I tried to do some searching to find out and it seems the Metroid Wiki doesn't seem to know either because talking about the Galactic Federation in the Metroidverse they say:

"The specifics of culture, religion, trade, currency, technology, civil rights/liberties, and so on are also unknown."

http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Federation

It's also like how Nintendo put a cross on Link's shield in the original Legend of Zelda but Link isn't a Christian. I think old school Nintendo just picked these words and icons without thinking too much about lore because they were easy to understand and are now a fun discussion point.

http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Christianity

But I digress because the point of all this is to say I FINALLY COMPLETED THE ORIGINAL METROID. Which was a fun tick on my video game bucket list. As I said before in talking about playing NES Metroid, the game really opens up after you collect 3+ Energy Tanks and the Varia suit and also improve in the way of the games platforming. So if you have a NES Classic, the ability to get a map of the game and some time, I recommend you play the game if you haven't yet.

I'm planning on playing Super Metroid when I open my SNES Classic and then after that want to tackle the 3DS Metroid Samus Returns. I've considered coming back to Metroid II on Gameboy but decided against it and are going to come in the 3DS game fresh.

A while ago Shovel Knight on consoles got two updates I was envious of. XBone owners got a Battle Toads content update and PS4 owners of the game got Kratos content. I don't love console exclusives but the Battle Toads content looked really cool and I always wanted to check it out. Looks like Yacht Club is making the Battle Toads content free for everyone on PC today so we all can!

"Hop to it! The Battletoads are now available on PC/Mac/Linux versions of Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove! Steam, Windows Store, Humble Store & GOG."

I linked to a good article from IGN about how to get the Battle Toads content along with the Battle Toads PC patch notes and update Tweet from Yacht Club.

http://yachtclubgames.com/update-notes/
https://twitter.com/YachtClubGames/status/916010644947722240
http://www.ign.com/wikis/shovel-knight/Battletoads

Fans have been asking Blizzard to get an "appear offline" mode in the Battle.net client for ages and they are finally brining that feature forward in beta. Steam has had it for ages, which is nice when you want to jump on and play a game without anyone bothering you or knowing about it. Sneaky!

"Appear offline allows you to set your status to show you as “offline” to your Blizzard friends while remaining connected to Battle.net. This means you can launch the app and game away without distraction.

Appearing offline will show you as offline to everyone in your Blizzard friends list. Once you have joined a game, the experience of appearing offline might be slightly different depending on which game you are playing. In the case of World of Warcraft, your guildmates will see your character come online and enter WoW’s in-game chat channels, and anyone who has you as a character-level friend will see you online on their friends list. Everyone outside of the same game as you will not see you online or playing any games.

Do you see a friend who’s offline but you really want to send them a message while it’s on your mind? You can now send offline friends messages and they will receive them the next time they come online! While appearing offline you can still send and receive messages in the app, but it is up to you when you want to respond."

There are a few more features including profiles and more social features and if you want to read more about that head over to the Blizzard blog below.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/21098852/new-social-features-now-in-beta-in-the-blizzard-battle-net-desktop-app