Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

NES Classic Complete: I Have The Box

I've wanted an NES Classic for quite some time and recently picked one up used. It was fortunate that I actually found one but it didn't come with the original box. I know some people immediately discard the boxes when they buy consoles and games but I've been keeping them all for years now. I was going to buy a box online but recently Will got a NES Classic and let me have his box!

Really excited to finally get this and I want to thank Will for hooking me up!

Ark: Survival Evolved Early Access Exit and Second DLC Announced

It’s been two years in the making, but after a few delays, Ark: Survival Evolved has finally come out of Early Access. Since I’ve been following this game’s development from the beginning, I think I’ve been on an interesting journey. Now it’s available on PC and consoles, which gives it a wide audience. Included in this release is the new $60 price tag. Luckily, I paid about half of that during Early Access, but I still think it’s worth it. There is a season pass available, too, which seems to be $30 at the moment.

Ark has always had something to look forward to, especially monthly content updates. Last year, Studio Wildcard announced Ark’s first DLC, Scorched Earth,... Read All It’s been two years in the making, but after a few delays, Ark: Survival Evolved has finally come out of Early Access. Since I’ve been following this game’s development from the beginning, I think I’ve been on an interesting journey. Now it’s available on PC and consoles, which gives it a wide audience. Included in this release is the new $60 price tag. Luckily, I paid about half of that during Early Access, but I still think it’s worth it. There is a season pass available, too, which seems to be $30 at the moment.

Ark has always had something to look forward to, especially monthly content updates. Last year, Studio Wildcard announced Ark’s first DLC, Scorched Earth, for about $20. This drew criticism because the core game was still in Early Access. Ark was originally supposed to exit Early Access last year, about the time of Scorched Earth’s release, but it got delayed.

This year, Stuido Wildcard has announced the second DLC, Aberration. It will cost about $20, without the season pass. Apparently, you’re on a faulty Ark in space and have to survive in extreme environmental hazards such as radiation. There are mutated creatures on this Ark. One such creature is show in the trailer that can fly and camouflage itself, it’s like a flying chameleon. There seems to be a vast underground and caverns. It looks interesting and is due to come out next month.

I’ve spent over 2,300 hours playing Ark. I started out on my own, then got invited to an official server. I met friends in the tribe and enjoyed my time there, but I ended up coming back to the single player game. I’ve been loving it since the beginning and more content is definitely something I look forward to. I remember how exciting it was to get all those new content updates, which were more frequent early on, but slowed down to once a month.

One of the things I’ve been looking forward to most is the game’s optimization. This game helped me learn more about my graphics card, the GTX 690. I learned that it was a dual-GPU card that worked by using SLI. Unfortunately some games are only able to use one of those GPUs, until they become SLI compatible. So, I had to research the game’s various video settings and figure out what would work best. I had to downgrade DirectX to double my frame rate and get some sense of stability, which came at a huge cost to image quality. In the end, I decided to buy a GTX 980 Ti and I finally got to experience those high quality graphics for myself. Optimizations have come, even GeForce Experience has updated and can now optimize the game’s settings based on your hardware. Those settings work well for me, although I had to make a slight adjustment.

Part of what I love most about this game is that it shares some aspects of games I’ve enjoyed in recent years, such as Terraria and Minecraft. You can craft a lot of items, upgrade armor, build, and tame creatures to help you. It can be scary and fun. There is lore or a story, but it’s not extremely apparent or in your face. You can find out about it by finding the various Explorer Notes left around the maps.

If you play online on an official server, it can take a long time to build up and tame creatures, which is why being part of a bigger tribe can be important. But, if you play on an unofficial server or single player mode, you can customize a huge variety of options that can help make your game play more pleasant.

Aberration news source:
https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/articles.html/ark-aberration-expansion-pack-announced-r542/

Ark official launch trailer:
https://youtu.be/5fIAPcVdZO8

Blitzmensch Is Every Nazi's Hero!

I think Bethesda might be the kings and queens of next level video game advertising that border on satirical art. With the recent protests of actual Nazi's in the US (can't believe that shit is real and happening) Wolfenstein II is verging into eerily real territory. In an earlier trailer for Wolf II Nazi's and the KKK stand side by side in an American street as buddies. With all that's happening in the US and the story iD Software wants to tell with Wolfenstein II it's just an interesting intersection where art imitates life but in the words of everyone favorite Nazi hunter BJ Blazkowicz...

"I got kids on the way and i'll be damed if i'm gonna raise them in a world... Read All

Strap In For The Most Technical Explanation of The Game Genie Ever!

Retro Game Mechanics Explained is a YouTube channel that goes over some of the most highly technical explanations of retro games and systems i've ever seen. In the video i've linked above he talks about the Game Genie which I never really thought about but the explanation of how it works makes sense and it's such an elegant solution to the problem I tip my hat to the developers of it. Bit of a warning though, it's highly technical and discusses some pretty low level computer concepts such as registers and op codes.

Enjoy!

Super Meat Boy Forever Is Smashing On All The Systems In 2018!

The Super Meat Boy Forever trailer launched today with news of it's upcoming launch in 2018 on PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. This looks to be a good movement for the game and some aspects of it are refined somewhat such as the controls moving to two buttons.

"Two Buttons? That Sounds Dumb! Here’s the thing: shut up. Two buttons doesn’t mean less control, it means we designed levels to use two buttons. You can get a surprising amount of movement and precision by designing levels that complement your controls. Super Meat Boy felt great because there was a marriage of level design and controls, Super Meat Boy Forever is no different."

It's also made... Read All The Super Meat Boy Forever trailer launched today with news of it's upcoming launch in 2018 on PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. This looks to be a good movement for the game and some aspects of it are refined somewhat such as the controls moving to two buttons.

"Two Buttons? That Sounds Dumb! Here’s the thing: shut up. Two buttons doesn’t mean less control, it means we designed levels to use two buttons. You can get a surprising amount of movement and precision by designing levels that complement your controls. Super Meat Boy felt great because there was a marriage of level design and controls, Super Meat Boy Forever is no different."

It's also made of dynamically constructed levels much like Diablo III taking pre-constructed segments and moving them around to make multiple playthroughs different.

"“Procedurally generated” is an overused term that applies to a wide range of things. While the levels are randomly generated, they aren’t truly random and their creation is heavily based on criteria we’ve designed and tested. Each level consists of hundreds of carefully designed “chunks” that are placed together to create a level. Chunks are selected randomly from pools that are categorized by difficulty by us. Each time you beat a level, an increased difficulty criteria is used to generate the harder version of that level. Also, levels need to have a certain cadence to them so they don’t feel like just random stuff thrown at you. We’ve worked on a system that allows us to give a criteria of difficulty and pacing that makes the levels randomly, but still within the confines of what we want the levels to be presented as. Oh and also, it sounds way cooler than “procedurally generated”."

Looks like this Meat Boy will work out just as well on PC as it will on Phones and Consoles and if it's anything like I saw at PAX in 2014 it should be great. Tommy will be at PAX this year showing the game off so I imagine we will hear much more about how the game plays then!

http://www.supermeatboy.com/

Shovel Knight King of Cards Will Be The Last Full Story Expansion For Shovel Knight!

Yacht Club games blasted on to the Indie scene with an amazing Kickstarter for Shovel Knight. The game was funded and all of the games strech goals were met giving the base game a TON of extra content. If you've had Shovel Knight since the beginning you've see it get update after update making the game get so much bigger and adding a ton of new story content like Plague Knight and Spector Knight campaigns as well as Gender Swap mode and Co-op. Shovel Knight is set to get it's final set of story based content in Shovel Knight: King of Cards in 2018!

"Shovel Knight: King of Cards is the final campaign in the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove saga, and it’s bigger and grander... Read All

NintendoAge Community Finds Extremely Rare Copy of Prototype SimCity on NES

"We still can't believe it's happened, but SimCity for the NES has been unearthed! Back from the depths of a closet, two protoype carts have appeared like Bowser on the loose in Tokyo, stomping, smashing, and ripping up all guesses on what their value may be!

Yesterday, a longtime NA member BIGDADDYRAMIREZ posted the above two minute video showcasing the first footage seen of this unreleased NES game since it appeared on Johnny Arcade in 1991. Where exactly did they come from? Well, turns out BIGDADDYRAMIREZ is the owner of Back in Time, a chain of game stores in the Seattle area, and like unicorns are want to do, they both walked in the other day. We just got off the... Read All

Get A Limited Pressing Of Street Fighter II On Super Nintendo

Capcom is teaming up with IAm8Bit to create a limited run of Street Fighter II to 3,500 units at $100 each. It's an honest to God Super Nintendo repo cart and it's pressed to look like the original yet, it's red. The box is a tri-fold box with foil and a glossy finish that should make any collector jealous. They are randomly going to mix in 1k Blanka Green glow in the dark carts for the lucky few that get those shipped to their house. It's an interesting way to distribute and even more limited edition version of the game and the site totally allows buying 5 to increase you chances of hitting Blanka!

... Read All

Join The Destiny 2 Open Beta August 29th-31st On PC On Battle.net!

"The Open Beta phase will begin on August 29 at 10 a.m. PT. All PC players will be able to play for FREE during this period. To play, you’ll just need the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app and a free Blizzard account—no additional sign-up or code required."

I've heard great things so far about Destiny 2 on PC and it seems it's a very amazingly created port that runs super smoothly. Curious what everyones thoughts are now that anyone with access to Battle.net can give it a try for a couple days?

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/20974970/play-destiny-2-free-on-pc-august-29-31-during-open-beta?utm_source=destiny-2-open-beta-activation-20170829

Secret of Mana Is Being Remade In 3D

Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo is one of the best RPG's of all time. It was remade on the iPhone in 2012 and I thought that port was terrible in every possible way. So i'm a bit nervous to hear that Square is remaking Secret of Mana in 3D and launching it in 2018. It could be a great game. But... if the trailer is any indication, it doesn't look like it will be that good. Firstly the voice acting isn't to my liking and i'm not a big fan of the art style either. Still the game could be fun and i'm not going to rule it out entirely, i'm just not too excited about playing it. Personally, i'm more excited about getting it on the Super Nintendo Classic, but I am a... Read All