Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

The Day Of The Devs Bundle Is Out And It's Well Worth A Look!

Recently the Day of the Devs Bundle hit and it contains a game I wanted to add to my collection in Full Throttle Remastered. I loved the original LucasArts classic and I've been really happy with how Double Fine has remade a bunch of the old LucasArts games for the modern era. Originally I was going to pick this up SIMPLY because I wanted Full Throttle Remastered but after watching the trailer for Everything I am thinking i'll be playing that too. Actually, I watched the trailer for Everything had no idea what it was and watched the gameplay video linked above and was ABSOLUTELY floored by it. I've never been drawn to think about life in the way I did after watching a... Read All

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 10/25/2017 at 04:05pm

I picked up the full bundle. Payed a little extra, because I think it is worth it.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 10/25/2017 at 04:21pm

Not to be trite, but Everything is, indeed, awesome. There are situations in the trailer that I haven't experienced yet during my playing, but the sprinkling of recordings from philosopher Alan Watts alone, acting as a sort of spiritual guide, tying Everything together, give the game a depth of intrigue that might otherwise have left me to bury it deep in a wishlist. The games creators indicate that these in-game recordings are optional, and they are, but I'm sure that most that have played would say that they are essential to Everything's presentation of everything. If you deep dive with an open mind, you may find yourself questioning things that you have yet considered, or dared not. It's a rabbit hole well worth falling into.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 10/25/2017 at 05:07pm

I don't know about the rolling animals.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/26/2017 at 03:40am

The rolling animals really didn't make sense to me but then I let the gameplay trailer work it's magic and I found it really endearing. Want to talk more about it after I play it.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 10/26/2017 at 03:24pm

When you do get around to playing, I highly recommend using headphones.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/27/2017 at 04:48am

> When you do get around to playing, I highly recommend using headphones.

Will do.

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I Think I'm Getting The Zelda Encyclopedia Now

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Kotaku reported that the upcoming Zelda Encyclopedia is getting a deluxe release that looks strikingly like the original NES cart. This looks like total "collectors bait" and as such I really want one. I might try to add this to my Christmas list but at $80 it's not really in the "stocking stuffer zone."

"Due out in April from Dark Horse, The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia is a 320-page tome covering the characters, places and things from the first 30 years of Nintendo’s RPG series. The newly-revealed $80 deluxe edition looks very familiar. It even has an instruction booklet polypropylene sleeve that folds out.

Covered in gold foil paper with embossed, debossed and... Read All

Portland Retro Game Expo 2017 Pickups And Tournament Shoutouts!

Cheerful Ghost was at this years Portland Retro Game Expo and it was the best expo yet! I guess I say that every year but this is my favorite convention and this year everything came together really well. Everyone that came out to the booth to hang out with Adam, Wick and I were really great to talk to and I want to send a special shout out to the people that took part in our Tournaments and specifically:

Super Mario Brothers Speedrun to the end of World 1-4

Kevin - 2:06:00

Andres - 2:07:20

Aaron - 2:14:27

Bubble Bobble Score Tournament

Justin - 125,490

Eddy - 118,190

Kevin - 111,890

Marble Madness Highest Roller Score

Kevin - 75,070

Timothy - 26,820

Fritz - 20,420

Read All

Interview With Wick The Creator Of Crescent Loom!

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To help celebrate this weekend’s Portland Retro Game Expo I absolutely had to run an interview with Wick, the creator of the upcoming Indie mega hit Crescent Loom. Wick is also the creator of Starship Rubicon, a game we published a time ago and he is also fortunate enough to be boothing with us at this years Retro Expo! If you are visiting the con and heard about Cheerful Ghost or Crescent Loom and are checking us out for the first time then Hello! If you are a long time reader then welcome back! I urge everyone to checkout the interview below and ALSO to head over and try the web version of Crescent Loom at the URL below. You know, for science.

... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 7 - The Loot Box Explosion

In this episode of Cheerful Ghost Radio we talk about the original Blade Runner, totally nerd out overthe new Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer, and then discuss the new trend of loot boxes in games. Spoiler alert: we aren’t fans of loot boxes in most single player games.

Get Civilization III Free On Humble For The Next 48 Hours!

The Humble Bundle folks are giving away Civilization III for free on Steam for the next 48 hours and if you don't have this in your collection now seems like a good time to pick it up.

"Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete, the latest offering in the Sid Meier's Civilization III franchise, provides gaming fans with Sid Meier's Civilization III, the highly-addictive journey of discovery, combined with the updated and enhanced multiplayer expansion pack Sid Meier's Civilization III: Play the World*, as well as all of the great new civilizations, scenarios, and features from Sid Meier's Civilization III: Conquests! Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete provides more... Read All

The Switch Gets Native Video Recording

In the latest update for the Switch Nintendo added the ability to natively record in game 30 second video clips. This is a nice feature to share brief moments of games you play with friends but doesn't seem like a full solution for people that do game streaming. Still, I bet this will cover most peoples usecases for sharing fun moments with friends on Twitter or Facebook!

"Nintendo Switch system version 4.0.0 or later allows you to capture and share up to 30 seconds of gameplay on select games to your Facebook page and Twitter feed with the push of a button!"

https://www.nintendo.com/switch/system-update/

Next Up On The Nintendo Classic: Castlevania!

jdodson gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

jdodson gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

After recently completing Metroid and Mega Man 2 I decided to start playing Castlevania. One big motivation for picking up the Nintendo Classic was to finally add a bunch of games to my collection to play and Castlevania was one of those games. Castlevania has been a game on my bucket list and it's good to finally get around to playing it.

"Nintendo hard" came to mind immediately as I started playing Castlevania. The first few levels aren't too difficult but once you move on the difficulty ramps up and it doesn't seem to stop. Like with Mega Man 2 or Metroid if you spend some time to learn the game, you can get better a bit at a time. If you look at how long these... Read All After recently completing Metroid and Mega Man 2 I decided to start playing Castlevania. One big motivation for picking up the Nintendo Classic was to finally add a bunch of games to my collection to play and Castlevania was one of those games. Castlevania has been a game on my bucket list and it's good to finally get around to playing it.

"Nintendo hard" came to mind immediately as I started playing Castlevania. The first few levels aren't too difficult but once you move on the difficulty ramps up and it doesn't seem to stop. Like with Mega Man 2 or Metroid if you spend some time to learn the game, you can get better a bit at a time. If you look at how long these original Nintendo games are from start to finish(if you were practiced at them) they only contain a handful of hours of gameplay and because of this developers made them hard. So the average time that players beat Castlevania might be 3 hours but if you add up the amount of times you have to play the game to do that, it could take you upwards of 20 or more. So if you're not into playing the same levels over and over again then these old games might not seem like very much fun.

If I had one complaint of Castlevania it's that the platforming is often strange or a bit too unforgiving. For instance if you jump on a moving platform and you don't jump dead in the middle sometimes you can fall through it. This means that I am really careful jumping on moving platforms but it's something the original Super Mario Brothers could do well so i'm wondering what happened here? There are other instances that are just as odd but I have a few gameplay workarounds that seem to be fine they just took some figuring out.

One really nice feature of Castlevania is that the game doesn't penalize death as much as it could. Firstly you get unlimited continues which helps because Castlevania has no saved game feature and you die a lot. Castlevania is also fairly liberal with your whip upgrades often giving you them all in the very early parts of each stage making you get the most powerful main weapon rather quickly after you die. This is a huge improvement over other games like Altered Beast or Gradius that punish you way more for dying. One other fun aspect of Castlevania is the secondary items. Each one is pretty unique and useful in most situations. It's fun to consider how Castlevania influenced modern games such as Shovel Knight as many of the Castlevania items have direct Shovel Knight equals.

All that said, Castlevania is an incredible platformer and it's no wonder this kind of game spawned the incredibly popular Metroidvania genre. Even though Castlevania is difficult it never feels too punishing just that I have yet to figure something out or time a jump or attack properly. I'm looking forward to continuing my playthrough and I can't wait to take a crack at killing Dracula when his times comes!

Games Are Still Being Made On The Original NES? Metal Jesus & John Riggs Talk About New NES Homebrew Carts.

Metal Jesus and John Riggs cover a ton of NES Homebrew carts in this pretty great video. As I enjoy dark humor I thought Super Russian Roulette looked fun.

Not covered in this video are other NES Cart repros and i'm really been wanting to pickup Wisdom Tree's new NES cart pressing of all thier original NES games such as Sunday Funday, Exodus, Joshua, King of Kings, Bible Buffet and Spiritual Warfare. As a kid my parents bought me these bible games and even though i'm not religious now I look at all Wisdom Tree games with affection. I mean, some of them aren't great but I stand by Spiritual Warfare as the best NES Zelda clone ever made on the actual NES.

... Read All

Watch The Whole 2017 Nintendo World Championship Now!

Clocking in at a little under 5 hours, the Nintendo World Championship stream is a marathon session that the hardcore Nintendo lovers should watch. Featuring matches of Metroid: Samus Returns, Balloon Fight, Mario Kart 7, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Splatoon this Championship is a good mix of current Nintendo titles. It's a fun stream and the announcers do a good job of keeping things interesting.