Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Episode 14: Cheerful Ghost’s 6 Year Anniversary Celebration!

As we begin season 2 of Cheerful Ghost Radio we pause to reflect on the 6th anniversary of Cheerful Ghost by talking about some of our favorite memories. Since the new year in gaming is here we talk about some of the most exciting games coming out this year.

Show Notes:

Travis interviews Ryan Gordon: https://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/771/interview-with-ryan-c-gordon-about-linux-gaming

FarCry 5: https://far-cry.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/home/

Mega Man 11: https://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3564/mega-man-11-coming-in-2018

Project Octopath Traveler: https://cheerfulghost.com/Will_Ball/posts/3481/project-octopath-traveler-demo-impressions

Super Meat Boy Forever: ... Read All

Final Fantasy XV Coming to PC March 6th

http://benchmark.finalfantasyxv.com/common/img/ss1en.jpg?20180130

Final Fantasy XV is finally coming to PC on March 6. The PC edition includes all currently available DLC and some new features, like mod support, among others. Because it’s coming to PC, I now have one less reason to buy a PS4, thus saving me some money. Luckily, Square Enix released a benchmark. Check it out and feel free to post your score! I got 6079, which means I should be able to run the game on high quality settings comfortably. (http://benchmark.finalfantasyxv.com/na/)

I’ve long been a fan of the Final Fantasy series, although I haven’t felt as happy with the series in the last decade or so. So, even though I’m a bit eagerly awaiting this release, I feel a bit... Read All

Mario Kart Tour Is Coming To Smartphones In 2019!

Nintendo dropped a Tweet today mentioning that they are going to be releasing a new Mario Kart game on mobile.

"The checkered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour! #MarioKartTour Releasing in the fiscal year ending in March 2019."

I'm pretty interested in a Mario Kart game on phones but I hope it's not a badly paired down version of what makes Mario Kart games great. Super Mario Run was a really great version of New Super Mario Brothers on smartphones but I felt like Animal Crossing was a bit of a miss. I think a Mario Kart game could work with touch controls but I hope it doesn't get bogged... Read All

The Commodore 64 Mini Launches on March 29th

Retro game console re-releases have been a really popular market in the last few years and everyone is getting in on the action. The latest entrant, the Commodore 64 Mini will now release on March 29th featuring 64 licensed games, a USB connectable joystick and the ability to use it as a C64 family computer including the ability to write Commodore BASIC programs. They've also said the C64 Mini will be up-gradable via USB firmware updates and I imagine will be somewhat hackable as well.

The keyboard on the unit itself isn't functional but it does come with two USB ports so you can plug in your own keyboard. Depending on the price and how much of a functional C64 system... Read All

Listen To This Epic Two Hour Interview With Rian Johnson The Director of The Last Jedi

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If you are interested in knowing more about how Rian Johnson came to direct Star Wars The Last Jedi you absolutely must listen to this epic two hour interview with him about The Last Jedi. Firstly, the whole interview is incredible and you should listen to it all but Rian mentioned a few things I thought were interesting based on some of the feedback for The Last Jedi. One interesting bit is that Rian was writing The Last Jedi as The Force Awakens was filming and, at that point, he had the script and dailies to help him write The Last Jedi. He notes that he had no idea what aspects of The Force Awakens would resonate with fans. Rian also mentioned that Snoke seemed to... Read All

Project Octopath Traveler Developer Update

Project Octopath Traveler is a upcoming Switch game that looks to bring back some of the best parts of classic JRPG's from the 16bit era to modern gaming with a 3D flavor. The demo launched on the Switch last year and it showed a ton of promise but many people had issues with some of it. Looks like the developers of the game have addressed many of these concerns and talk about how they've updated the game in the developer update video above. Specifically they improved movement in terms of speeding up the character and allowing them to run much faster than before. They bumped up the encounter rate when running at full speed but that seems a fine trade off to get around... Read All

John Riggs Reviews The Retro-bit Super Retro Trio+

John Riggs reviews the new Retro-Bit Super Retro Trio+ that melds the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Genesis together in an interesting way. Not only can you play nearly all of the game karts of those systems with it but it allows you to switch between the different regions as well as provides composite video/audio out as well as HDMI at 720p. Like all X in one systems it supports the controller ports from all the systems so all your controllers work as well as provides a fair NES & SNES Controller out of the box. I have the Hyperkin RetreoN 3 which works really well for composite video/audio but I am looking at picking something up that will do HDMI out and this... Read All

Awesome Games Done Quick Roundup 2: Mega Man Race & More!

Continuing the Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 wrap up series with another set of amazing speedruns starting with the Mega Man 1, 2 & 3 relay race with Team Auto, Team Beat, Team Roll and Team Rush in 1:26:59. 4 teams all racing through the three Mega Man games in under an hour and thirty. If you are interested in getting some tips on running these games, this is the run to watch.

Hyper Light Drifter by simplyfir in 31:16 - Hyper Light Drifter is a new Indie game that melds the classic Zelda formula with the soothing music of Disasterpiece. It's an expert run by simplyfir and if you want to soak in this game it's a quick way to do it.

... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Games Club: Excitebike

Cheerful Ghost Games Club is back with Excitebike!

You may remember this semi-regular CG event where we pick a game and invite everyone to come play it with us and discuss what we think. This time, we're changing things up a bit. We will do one game a month (or maybe more!) and tying the events into a Cheerful Ghost Radio series about classic games.

We'll review the games in an episode following the event, and include opinions and commentary from people who joined and chatted with us about it.

This month's game is Excitebike! Excitebike is an NES racing game that has been a fan favorite since its launch with the NES. In addition to the main tracks, Excitebike lets you... Read All

My Pickups From The 4th Annual PRGE/NWCGE Swap Meet

The local retro game collector community is pretty strong and as such we have a lot of local events strung through the year that are well worth attending even if you are lightly into the retro scene. In October Cheerful Ghost runs a booth at Portland Retro Game Expo and in January some of the same folks host the PRGE/NWCGE Swap Meet. It's hosted at the Portland Double Tree and it's much smaller and more focused on buying, selling and trading retro games. Will and I hit it up this year and were some of the first people in line to peruse the crazy amount of amazing retro games and collectables. One of my yearly goals is to limit myself to only buying 5 games this year... Read All The local retro game collector community is pretty strong and as such we have a lot of local events strung through the year that are well worth attending even if you are lightly into the retro scene. In October Cheerful Ghost runs a booth at Portland Retro Game Expo and in January some of the same folks host the PRGE/NWCGE Swap Meet. It's hosted at the Portland Double Tree and it's much smaller and more focused on buying, selling and trading retro games. Will and I hit it up this year and were some of the first people in line to peruse the crazy amount of amazing retro games and collectables. One of my yearly goals is to limit myself to only buying 5 games this year and that makes going to a retro game expo tough but I had a game in mind I've wanted to get for a long time. One of my favorite games on the Super Nintendo is King Arthur's World and it's one of the more obscure games on the platform. I never thought the game got the recognition it deserved as a kind of Lemmings inspired knights and wizards RTS. Since the game doesn't have a huge following it doesn't sell for a lot so I picked it up for a good price.

As Will and I were rounding the show floor I overheard a vendor saying they wanted to move their issues of Nintendo Power and were selling them for a dollar. They were bagged and boarded and in great condition so I immediately was interested. The guy that the vendor told that to directly nabbed each issue he could find but missed a box so after he left I swooped in and walked away with 18 issues. I'm thinking about slowly working to owning a nearly complete collection and this is a really great first step. The issues I bought were Top Secret Passwords, Super Mario Bros. Inside Out Part 1 & 2, Issue Number 9, 23, 24, 26, 28, 37, 45, 48, 55, 63, 68, 70, 71, 74 & 107. I'm thinking a complete collection up to about issue 70 or so sounds good so i'm fairly well on my way to that.

I also picked up a couple versions of Star Wars on VHS I didn't own yet in The Empire Strikes back 1992 release along with The Making of Star Wars VHS released in 1995. I've nearly completed my Star Wars on VHS collection and all I need to button it up is Empire and Jedi on the original CBS/FOX VHS run and Revenge of the Sith. I'm still not sure if I plan on collection all the versions of Star Wars on Laserdisc or if i'll just go for one version of the trilogy on Laserdisc. It's a really obscure format and like Betamax i'm interested in how hard it might be to find locally.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 01/26/2018 at 05:07pm

3D graphics and Dolby Surround Sound! I really don't remember this game at all. Hopefully I can see it sometime soon!

And that's rad about the Nintendo Powers. I remember having so many as a kid, but I don't remember what happened to them. I probably didn't take care of them, and they got recycled after falling apart lol

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 01/26/2018 at 05:34pm

It was funny, we found King Arthur at the last booth we visited. It was meant to be.

I picked up for the NES: Goonies 2, Fester's Quest and Batman and for the Genesis: Aladdin and Golden Axe.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 01/26/2018 at 06:06pm

Nice finds Will! Aladdin was great back in the day (I had it on the SNES), and I remember Fester's Quest and Batman from many weekend rentals :)

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 01/26/2018 at 06:32pm

Thanks! I had both Fester's Quest and Batman back when I originally had a NES, so I had to pick those up. I played Goonies 2 a lot at my friend's house back in the day and remember good things about it. I always wanted Aladdin for the Genesis, but never picked it up. As far as Golden Axe goes, it is just a fun game.

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