Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

I Think I'm Getting The Zelda Encyclopedia Now

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--rBD9VHci--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/bawr5tajxhahtnzbwnti.jpg

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!

https://i0.wp.com/wick.works/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/151_newmusclepoints_trimmed.gif

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.

Humble Bundle Was Acquired By IGN

"Announcing our biggest bundle ever: Humble Bundle is proudly joining the IGN family! We will continue to bring you all of our humble products, but with more resources and help from IGN.

We chose IGN because they really understand our vision, share our passion for games, and believe in our mission to promote awesome digital content while helping charity. I can’t think of a better partner than IGN to help Humble Bundle continue our quest.

We will be working harder than ever to bring you the best gaming bundles, book bundles, and store sales, while nurturing the Humble Monthly and our new publishing initiative. We will keep our own office, culture, and amazing team with... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 10/14/2017 at 04:52am

This is... hmm...

I'm cautiously optimistic here. IF IGN stays hands-off with them and lets them keep doing their thing, then it's a win for everyone. If not... eeehhhhhhh...

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/16/2017 at 03:50am

I've been thinking more about this and I think IGN is buying The Humble Bundle for a play at the digital store games selling market.

My thought is that since The Humble Bundle has so many gamer accounts and "mindshare" and they have the Humble Store + Humble Monthly that IGN will double down on the digital store aspect and eventually they will rebrand the property as "Humble" or "The Humble Store" or something like that. They will keep the Humble Bundle but eventually the focus will be on the store part and the monthly games service that might eventually operate a bit more like Netflix. Not that you'd stop getting game keys, but they are already putting certain games in the monthly you will always get access to regardless of the month you start your subscription.

I sort of see this acquisition in the same way "Good old Games" eventually rebranded to GOG.com that is now a DRM free game store. Eventually Humble will release a service client that works outside the browser and even sell movies and such becoming a larger digital store. It will still keep the DRM free part where it can because that sets it apart from Steam, EA or UPlay.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 10/16/2017 at 09:33pm

How much does Humble donate? I sure hope IGN keeps the donation portion in place.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/16/2017 at 11:30pm

The Humble Store does 10%, but on the bundles you can choose how to spread it.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.

Sign Up / Log In