I was able to attend this years Steam Developer Days and had a great time. One big draw of the conference was the talks and Valve has dropped them all on their YouTube page. I linked to one really great talk above by Mike Ambinder on the Psychology of Games I recommend you watch. There are 25 talks available from this years Dev Days so if you are in need of some awesome game talks and have some time, hit the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckFgM6dUP2ihiMeKHoyIdHvhRSyqwQsp

If you want to read my thoughts on my two days at Steam Developer Days hit the links below.

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There was a lot of news out of this years BlizzCon and the bit that was most interesting to me was next Hearthstone expansion Mean Streets of Gagetzan. As with the last expansion Whispers of the Old Gods, Gadgetzan is a 132 card expansion that looks to contain some really fun elements that should mix up the current meta.

"All in the Family: Each class belongs to one of the city's three factions. Your class cards and neutral minions all fall into that faction's theme. The affiliations are:

Grimy Goons: Hunter, Paladin, Warrior
Kabal: Mage, Priest, Warlock
Jade Lotus: Druid, Rogue, Shaman

Faction Specials: Aside from class affiliations, the three factions each have their own... Read All


I normally keep up with these but I missed this one. Jon's post about the new Ocarina world record made me jump down this rabbit hole, and I discovered that, about a month ago, darbian broke the world record for the fastest Super Mario Bros. run at just under 4:56:878. He's the first human to get into the 4:56 range.

The fastest human-capable time is thought to be 4:55.96, if you're able to pull off every trick at the right spot. The fastest tool-assisted speedrun is currently 4:54.03, if you use the same timing methods as the human runs (TAS runs start the clock when the game powers on). Tool-assisted speedruns can make use of glitches that require pixel-perfect... Read All


Ocarina of Time is a classic Nintendo 64 game that is considered by some to be the best game of all time. Since Ocarina is such a popular game that over time it has become on of the most competitive games for speedrunning. I've tried to cover each new world record set for Ocarina and today the record has been beaten yet again by skater82297 at 17:24. A new time skip was found that involves collecting a bottle in the Deku tree that skips you directly to Gannons Castle. This was a fun run to watch and it's great to see people keep making Ocarina one of the best games to watch.


MetalJesusRocks is one of my favorite retro YouTubers because his videos contain stuff I don't see anywhere else like this video for the Pioneer LaserActive. The LaserActive was a LaserDisc player and console released back in the 90's that could play it's own games as well as Karaoke, Sega Genesis games and 3D games. I remember seeing this in the stores and thought it was awesome but it was crazy expensive for the 90's and I knew no one that actually owned it. As i've been collecting more old films on VHS I am getting closer to pulling the trigger on a LaserDisc player and if I ever found one of these would snap it up in a second if the price was right. That said,... Read All


Ubisoft has celebrated it's 30th year anniversary giving away some gaming classics such as Beyond Good and Evil, Rayman Origins, Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia Sands of Time. They are rounding out the celebration with a final set of two games and Novembers game is the 80's retro themed shooter Far Cry Blood Dragon. If you haven't played this you absolutely should head over to the link below on November 9th and redeem it on your UPlay account. Blood Dragon is a standalone game built on the Far Cry 3 engine that was written like a spiritual sequel to old 80's classics such as Terminator, Tron and Predator. It's not a very long game and can be completed in well under... Read All


In this episode of Nintendo's new online web show the Nintendo Minute they show off the upcoming NES Classic and quite a few games that come with it. There are a few details confirmed here such as the 3 foot long controllers and the incredible NES Classic interface in action. Not thrilled with the cord length and i'm honestly curious what the thinking was here? Do they expect us to stretch out the HDMI cable to make room from the TV to the couch? I hope someone makes some extension cables or something because that would make using the system in the living room much easier. I imagine if you were plugging the NES classic in to your monitor then the small cords wouldn't... Read All


Here's that crossover content that was teased a few weeks back!

Some time before the end of the year, Terraria will be getting a new invasion with new enemies and loot, and Dungeon Defenders 2 is getting some new levels and the Dryad as an unlockable hero! And she looks newly angry! I guess she has a corrupt form?

From the article:
"In this rare crossover event, Terraria players will get to experience intense invasion-style action straight from the magical realm of Etheria, while Dungeon Defenders 2 players will enlist the help of an ancient and powerful hero to face down new threats of a distinctly Terrarian nature."

"Terraria fans will get a new Dungeon Defenders... Read All


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Portland Retro Game Expo is a mecca for retro game lovers. This year we had a booth a the convention and ran four NES speedrun and score tournaments. Packie was the overall tournament master by winning two of our contests starting with his blistering 2 minute 04 second Super Mario Brothers 1-4 speedrun. Packie then ended the convention by absolutely demolishing our Dr. Mario score tournament with a score of 334,400! His Dr Mario ability was incredible and i've never really seen anything like his setup and execution of combos. Ben won Papers, Please on Steam for his 1 minute 26 second speedrun of Super Mario Brothers 3 to the first Toad House. Philly won our RC Pro AM... Read All


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Amazon recently debuted it's new Twitch Prime service that allowed existing and new Amazon Prime users a free Twitch subscription and some fun Hearthstone DLC. Since I already had Amazon Prime and play Hearthstone signing up for the free stuff made sense. Amazon mentioned that there would be monthly benefits to Twitch Prime and this month they are releasing some free DLC for Watch Dogs 2 and giving away Punch Club and This War Of Mine: Anniversary Edition. If Amazon keeps dropping free games and premium DLC every month it really makes the prospect of Twitch Prime a much sweeter deal. With that the free games don't seem to be Steam codes like you might expect.... Read All