Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

WarCraft III Reforged Coming in 2019!

In what might be the best news out of Blizzcon, Blizzard finally announced that it will release an entirely new HD remake of WarCraft III in 2019! WarCraft III Reforged will include entirely new upgraded visuals as well as a rebuilt game engine that looks fantastic! WarCraft III is one of the best real time strategy games I've played and it's focus on heroes make it really unique in the RTS space. WarCraft III Reforged is available for pre-order now for $30 for the standard game or $40 for the game plus WarCraft III themed DLC included in other Blizzard games.

I'm a huge WarCraft III fan and this is a day one purchase for me but since there are no pre-order bonuses I... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 38 : Ghosts 'n Goblins Halloween Spooktacular!

In this extra spooky episode, we played Ghosts 'n Goblins and were haunted by the experience!

Ghosts 'n Goblins is a brutally difficult action platformer on the NES and NES Classic that has delighted and tormented people for decades. It spawned a sequel on the SNES, two spin-off series, and a few thousand broken controllers probably.

No Man's Sky The Abyss Update

The new update for No Man's Sky has a launch trailer. The Abyss adds many underwater things including better visuals, more creatures, sunken treasure, the ability to build underwater, and the ability to use your jetpack underwater. I'm mostly glad that they made it so we can use our jetpack underwater. I've always felt that swimming in NMS wasn't so great. So, this update seems pretty cool, check out the embedded trailer for many more details.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/31/2018 at 02:18am

I was just coming here to post this. They are really pushing major updates lately, and they still say this is only the beginning. I can't wait to see what's coming.

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 10/31/2018 at 02:25am

Beat ya to it LOL! I made news of it in the chat, was going to add it onto your old update post, but then decided to just post it.

Yeah, apparently the game is getting some kind of weekly updates. These major ones aren't the weekly ones. They did say there's more to come. I, too, wonder what that could be.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/31/2018 at 02:28am

"The chat"? Oh! The CG Steam chat? I haven't gotten any notifications for that in ages.

The weekly updates are ok, very brief quests.

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 10/31/2018 at 03:19am

Yeah the Steam chat. I post news there sometimes, usually about free games to grab. I think it's the perfect place to share that kind of stuff.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/01/2018 at 01:42am

I tried this out for a few minutes, just long enough to jump in the lake in front of my house, and wow it’s so much better to get around underwater. And really pretty down there too

Azurephile Super Member Post Author wrote on 11/01/2018 at 02:36am

Awesome! I haven't played in a while. I was doing a mission that required me to collect a certain mineral to increase my standing with one of the factions. I'm really glad they fixed the swimming thing, I hated swimming before. Thanks for the input!

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Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review

Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

If you’ve played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you may be familiar with its mini-game called Gwent. Gwent is a card game played by various NPCs in the game. However, you no longer need to play The Witcher 3 in order to play Gwent as it is now it’s own free-to-play game. Gwent is a simple card game where most cards have values and the one who has the highest strength value on the board at the end of a round wins. There are three rounds. You can pass if you decide your strength value is high enough, saving some of your cards for the next round. This is sometimes a good strategy to use. Some cards also have abilities which can be helpful and there are cards that only have... Read All If you’ve played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you may be familiar with its mini-game called Gwent. Gwent is a card game played by various NPCs in the game. However, you no longer need to play The Witcher 3 in order to play Gwent as it is now it’s own free-to-play game. Gwent is a simple card game where most cards have values and the one who has the highest strength value on the board at the end of a round wins. There are three rounds. You can pass if you decide your strength value is high enough, saving some of your cards for the next round. This is sometimes a good strategy to use. Some cards also have abilities which can be helpful and there are cards that only have abilities.

Thronebreaker is actually more like story mode Gwent. You walk around on a map as a queen. You run into various things on the map such as resources, which can be used to upgrade your camp. Your camp has a few different buildings and some of what you can build makes available new cards that you can create. All combat in the game is actually a Gwent match. There are also puzzles you can find where you may have a limited amount of rounds to play, limited deck, and must complete the puzzle a certain way in order to win. Puzzles seem to have their own level of difficulty. One beautiful thing about matches is that if you’re playing on the easiest difficulty and lose, you can choose to skip the battle. This completes the match as though you won. This applies to all matches, including puzzles.

I’m not sure how I found out about Thronebreaker, but I watched a video about it on IGN. The person said this was a game that reminded him why he got into gaming in the first place. IGN also gave the game a very high score, 90+ out of 100 I believe. I don’t know that I think of it as highly as that reviewer, but it’s still a good game. The story is interesting and the characters are cool.

If you’d like to play Thronebreaker, you’ll need to hop on over to GOG to buy it as this game is not available on Steam (*edit* this game is now on Steam). There you will also find Gwent, which you can get for free. One cool thing is that even owning Thronebreaker unlocks cards that can be used in Gwent. You can also unlock other cards while playing the game. I think it’s pretty neat, especially since it seems that getting an achievement in the game always unlocks cards for Gwent.

If you like customizable card games, check out Gwent, since it’s free. If you like what you see then I’d recommend getting Thronebreaker.

The Full Game List Reveal For The Playstation Classic!

Sony dropped the full list of games on the Playstation Classic and it looks great. The only other game I may have added was Spyro, but this list is pretty compelling. Is this something you're going to get now that the Playstation Classic list is in it's final form?

The Playstation Classic launched 12/3/2018 at any store you can find it for $99.99.

Battle Arena Toshinden

Cool Boarders 2

Destruction Derby

Final Fantasy VII

Grand Theft Auto

Intelligent Qube

Jumping Flash

Metal Gear Solid

Mr Driller

Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee

Rayman

Resident Evil Director’s Cut

Revelations: Persona

Ridge Racer Type 4

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

Syphon Filter

Tekken 3

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow... Read All

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/30/2018 at 02:24am

I'm not really interested in this, however I like that they're doing it. If this system had some more of my favorite PS games, I'd want it. That would include FFVIII, and Chrono Trigger just to name a couple.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/30/2018 at 05:37pm

Chrono cross is an odd omission but you know they’d pick FF7 over 8 or 9.

Moreover, this list looks great and really makes me wonder why they chose the games they did when they teased it. Maybe they had finalized licensing on those and hadn’t the others?

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/30/2018 at 06:54pm

Thanks for the correction Travis, although Chrono Trigger was on there, too, along with FFIV and VI.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/31/2018 at 02:13am

Oh, I actually wasn't correcting you, I didn't properly read the word "trigger" in your comment and thought you were talking about Chrono Cross. I think I just read what I expected to be there!

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/31/2018 at 02:27am

I was talking about the one that I played on the PS during our time at RU. I realized I was in error with mixing up "Trigger" and "Cross," even though CT did finally come to the PS along with FFIV and VI. See now I'm repeating myself, but you did help me see my error. LOL

Travis Admin wrote on 10/31/2018 at 02:29am

Yeah I got it, we were both confused :D

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CivClicker Is An Empire Builder In Your Browser And Launches On Cheerful Ghost BBS Today!

Civilization on DOS was the first turn based strategy game I was addicted to. It felt like you could do anything and I used diplomacy, strategic building and nukes to dominate the other civilizations. The turn based strategy genre has a fun history and Civilization is still the king of the crop even now. But what if you wanted that same Civilization flavor but wanted to simplify it a bit? What if you wanted to build an epic Civilization but didn’t want to spend a ton of time learning a complex user interface or build strategy? What if you could play a Civ type game right in your desktop browser or on your phone?

https://cheerfulghost.com/games/civclicker

Well friend... Read All Civilization on DOS was the first turn based strategy game I was addicted to. It felt like you could do anything and I used diplomacy, strategic building and nukes to dominate the other civilizations. The turn based strategy genre has a fun history and Civilization is still the king of the crop even now. But what if you wanted that same Civilization flavor but wanted to simplify it a bit? What if you wanted to build an epic Civilization but didn’t want to spend a ton of time learning a complex user interface or build strategy? What if you could play a Civ type game right in your desktop browser or on your phone?

https://cheerfulghost.com/games/civclicker

Well friend today is an early Christmas because Cheerful Ghost is launching an all new game to our BBS called CivClicker! CivClicker is a empire building idle / clicker game you can play right now in your browser. In CivClicker you start out by collecting resources such as food, wood and stone and use those to structures to house your townsfolk. You can choose what jobs your townsfolk can have such as Farmer(to automatically collect food), Woodcutter(automatically gain wood) and Miner (to automatically gain stone). From there the game branches out pretty deeply by unlocking new structures and giving you the ability to take over neighboring villages and kingdoms. It’s a pretty deep game but simple enough to be accessible to play in your web browser.

One of the most magical parts about CivClicker is that it’s an open source project that was created by David Holley in 2013. David’s original work was later extended by fixing bugs and making the interface work well on mobile devices by Scott Colcord and Luke Nickerson. This open source license allows us the ability to give CivClicker a home on our BBS and you the ability to play it right now. I want to thank David, Scott and Luke for their work as CivClicker is a really special game.

Head over to our BBS and give CivClicker a shot and let me know what you think of it in the comments below!

Your First 15 Minutes In CivClicker

To make the game a bit more accessible I’m going to outline your first steps with the game to help ease you into playing it.

Firstly click the harvest button 20 times and the cut buttons 20 times. This gives you 20 food, some skins as well as 20 wood which allows you the ability to build a hut. You need huts to hire hire villagers to work.

You build a hut click the “idle citizens” drop down and select farmers and click the +1 button. This hires a farmer that will start auto collecting food at a rate of 0.2 every second. If you follow this process (by clicking harvest 20 more times for 20 food per farmer) you can add enough farmers to get 1 food per second and onward and upward.

As you add woodcutters and miners realize that your ability for your farmers to gather food goes down a bit so there is a constant need for farmers for a big village. If people don’t have enough food to eat they get unhappy and die so make sure your village is well fed!

People dying isn’t the worst thing but it requires you to bury them at some point or you might have issues with corpses or zombies…

Those are the basics but if you find anything useful drop it in the comments!

GDQ Express Streams All Weekend From Twitchcon!

Games Done Quick Express is a new charity speedrun from the Games Done Quick community that drops Friday October 26th and runs all weekend during Twitchcon! The charity it benefits is the TwitchCon Charity plaza which supports The Able Gamers Charity, American Center for Suicide Prevention, The Call of Duty Endowment, Direct Relief, Doctors Without Borders, Extra Life, Make a Wish, Save The Children, Saint Judes Hospital & To Write Love on Her Arms. If you are interested in watching some kick ass speedruns for classic games such as Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, Ocarina of Time 3D, Diablo 2 and some amazing new ones such as Mario Odyssey then tune in to the GDQ Express... Read All

Super Mario Bros. 3 Turns 30 And Fred Savage Can't Stop Celebrating!

Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan in 1988 and later came to the United States a year later making it widely regarded as one of the most influential Mario and platform games. Back in the early 90's I played a ton of Super Mario Bros. 3 and loved it so much I constantly read the Nintendo Players Guide to the point of destroying the magazine binding requiring me to fix it with some packing tape. I still have my Nintendo Players Guide and was happy to see it largely recreated in the recent "Playing with Power" NES Classic guide.

A lot has been said about Super Mario Bros. 3 and I think a good way of shining a light on this classic game is through a recent series of... Read All Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan in 1988 and later came to the United States a year later making it widely regarded as one of the most influential Mario and platform games. Back in the early 90's I played a ton of Super Mario Bros. 3 and loved it so much I constantly read the Nintendo Players Guide to the point of destroying the magazine binding requiring me to fix it with some packing tape. I still have my Nintendo Players Guide and was happy to see it largely recreated in the recent "Playing with Power" NES Classic guide.

A lot has been said about Super Mario Bros. 3 and I think a good way of shining a light on this classic game is through a recent series of interviews Nintendo did with the original developers of the game during the launch of the NES Classic. If you haven't played Super Mario Bros. 3 and have the inclination to i'd recommend picking up a NES Classic as it's one of the best ways to relive it.

"Super Mario Bros. 3 came out in 1988, three years after Super Mario Bros. How did that come about?

Miyamoto: The game before that, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, had been Tezuka-san's directorial debut. That went well, so we decided to make a completely new game.

Tezuka-san, did you feel pressure as the director of Super Mario Bros. 3? After all, the original Super Mario Bros. was an incredible hit.

Tezuka: I didn't feel pressure from the original game so much as I felt like I needed to do a good job. But it wouldn't come together well and dragged on.

Miyamoto: And Nakago-san got angry. (laughs)

Tezuka: Yeah, he definitely got angry. (laughs)

What wouldn't come together?

Tezuka: At first, we were making it with a bird's-eye view rather than a side view.

The view was looking down diagonally from overhead rather than directly from the side as in Super Mario Bros.

Tezuka: Yes. But we couldn't do it well.

Miyamoto: He said he wanted to look from a little above. But in Super Mario Bros. it is important whether Mario's feet hit the ground or not, even barely. With a diagonal view from slightly overhead, you lost your sense of distance to the ground. So I told him that development would be difficult.

Tezuka: Yeah, it was. (laughs wryly) So partway through development, we switched to a side viewpoint, but there are relics of the bird's-eye view in the final product.

Miyamoto: Yeah.

For example, the black-and-white checkered floor.

Tezuka: Yeah.

Tezuka-san, what was your original idea for making Super Mario Bros. 3?

Tezuka: We made Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels by changing the original game's difficulty and stage design, but we couldn't do that again, so I wanted to change everything, including its general appearance."

If you want to read the rest of the interview and I recommend you do, head over to the Nintendo website!

https://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/super-mario-bros-and-super-mario-bros-3-developer-interview

Goodbye Life... My Review Of Egg, Inc.

jdodson gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

jdodson gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

Travis let me know about an idle clicker game I haven't heard of before called Egg, Inc. and since I like clicker games I decided to give it a shot. As with many clicker / idle games Egg, Inc. has you amassing a ton of eggs to sell on your egg farm and it starts out fairly simply. You have a modest egg farm making a few thousand to where I am now with a farm making Septillions of dollars. One huge upside to playing Egg, Inc. is that you learn what the names of high number counts are which is kind of a neat thing to know. One other cool aspect of Egg, Inc. is that it will draw you back to play each second of your life away until you are a soulless husk that only wants... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 10/25/2018 at 08:49pm

Man I dunno what it is about this one but I’m sooo incredibly hooked. I don’t like clicker games. Thankfully for the most part you level out of needing to tap the button to hatch chickens or else I probably would have moved on long ago.

I’m currently making decillions per second on my Infinity egg farm and there are a few eggs to go. Some people have been casually playing this thing for two years and still haven’t gotten to the last one.

I think this one is going to keep my interest somehow.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/26/2018 at 02:35am

I don't believe I've played a clicker game, but I'm aware of Clicker Heroes and Clicker Heroes 2. Have you tried those games? The first is free, I might check it out sometime.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/26/2018 at 03:15am

> I’m currently making decillions per second on my Infinity egg farm and there are a few eggs to go. Some people have been casually playing this thing for two years and still haven’t gotten to the last one.

Wow, that's an incredible amount of focus.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/26/2018 at 03:15am

I don't think I have Greg.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/26/2018 at 04:37am

What exactly is a clicker game? One that you just click stuff often? I think I understand the concept.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/26/2018 at 05:11am

It’s a game where a big part of it, at least for a time is clicking to collect a resource.

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The Portland Retro Game Expo 2018 Retrospective + Gaming Pickups!

Thank you to everyone that stopped by to visit the Cheerful Ghost Booth or played in one of our game tournaments. The Portland Retro Game Expo is my favorite convention and everyone who comes out makes it awesome. I also want to thank Adam Farnsworth for working the booth with me this weekend!

The Winners of This Years Cheerful Ghost Tournaments!

Super Mario Bros. on NES Speed run to Bowser's axe on World 1-4

David Harrison (The Winter Soldier) won this with a blistering time of 2:03.20! Seriously time yourself and stop when you hit Bowsers axe at the end of 1-4. Now do it when people are watching. Good luck!

https://imgur.com/SbpUhjt
https://imgur.com/8C0djTw

Mario Paint... Read All

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/24/2018 at 04:34am

I strongly recommend you add Hyrule Warriors to your list of Wii U games to get. It's definitely my favorite! Smash Bros. is a great one to get, too. And yeah, I knew that the zapper doesn't work on modern TVs (aka flat screens). I can't remember how I know that, I just do. LOL

Do you have a Switch? If you don't have one with Breath of the Wild, you can get the game for the Wii U! You should also check out Twilight Princess HD, there's one that comes with a Wolf Link amiibo that works great with BotW. Speaking of amiibos, you should look into collecting them, too. They have a variety of uses, depending on what game you're playing. For instance, the Wolf Link amiibo adds Wolf Link as your companion in BotW. I'm not too sure, but I think you can get Epona by using an amiibo. Other amiibos give random or certain things in the game.

I'll look forward to your Wii U review (hey that rhymes!) and add my "2 cents." Oh, I just remembered Mario Kart 8 is pretty good, too! I never thought the Wii U was a bad system, but it didn't sell as wildly as the Wii.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/24/2018 at 04:46am

> I strongly recommend you add Hyrule Warriors to your list of Wii U games to get. It's definitely my favorite!

Done. You've talked about it so much, surprised it's not already there. Which system, 3DS or Wii U?

> And yeah, I knew that the zapper doesn't work on modern TVs (aka flat screens). I can't remember how I know that, I just do. LOL

So we used a flat CRT screen so the shots registered most of the time. It's just that 20% didn't so it made for a terrible tournament game

> Do you have a Switch? If you don't have one with Breath of the Wild, you can get the game for the Wii U!

Not yet, but I plan on getting one for Christmas and want to save getting Breath of the Wild for the Switch.

> You should also check out Twilight Princess HD

It's totally on my Wii U pickups list. I didn't see it at the expo or i'd have bought it.

> I'll look forward to your Wii U review (hey that rhymes!) and add my "2 cents." Oh, I just remembered Mario Kart 8 is pretty good, too! I never thought the Wii U was a bad system, but it didn't sell as wildly as the Wii.

There are a lot of games I want to get ONLY on the Switch that are available for both systems. Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8, New Super Mario Bros Wii U & Luigi U. Sometimes I don't mind having dupes on multiple systems but in the case of the Wii U and Switch i'd rather get the Switch version. I'm focusing on Wii UI games you can't get anywhere else but the Wii U.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 10/24/2018 at 04:50pm

It was a lot of fun! I am after all Marvel games (including bad and meh games), so I picked up a bunch of Marvel games. I also got Altered Beast for the Genesis, Donkey Konga 2 and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for the GameCube and finally Q-Bert and Mickey Mousecapade for the NES.

As always I was overwhelmed by the number of vendors and goods on the expo floor, but it was still a lot of fun.

The best panels IMHO were the ones done by Ben Heckendorn. He is a really good speaker.

The biggest meh of the expo was the Intellivision Amico. They did not have any actual hardware or games to show, but announced a 10-10-2020 release date. The price point of $149 - $179 seems under-priced for the hardware that they want to ship. Plus I am not a fan of digital only games. I was not impressed and walked out of the talk.

On the other hand, I was really impressed with the CollectorVision Phoenix (https://collectorvision.com/shop/colecovision/colecovision-hd-system/). Not only did they have a working console there, they had actual games running on the thing. This FPGA console will run CollecoVision and Atari 2600 games. They mentioned that the code will be open source so people will be able to expand on it. It was a really impressive piece of hardware.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 10/24/2018 at 05:19pm

I haven't tried Hyrule Warriors on the 3DS, but I know that it only works well on the "New 3DS," not the model before that.

I didn't realize so many games were for both systems and I think Hyrule Warriors is among them. I wouldn't really recommend getting duplicates either.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 10/24/2018 at 11:33pm

I just realized there's only a 4-hundredths of a second difference in the winning time of SMB AND F-Zero :)

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 10/25/2018 at 01:52am

I am surprised I didn’t get special mention as fastest to game over!

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