Blogger Archive: singlebanana 
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Well, another month has gone by here at RFGeneration and it's been another great month of submissions by our members. Submissions for the month totaled 2,085 items, which were comprised of 1,958 game submissions and 127 hardware submissions.
Before I get to the top submitters and approvers for the month, want to take some time to give a very special thank you to one of our busiest, behind-the-scenes members, bickman2k. As most of you know, the site was really struggling under the old server. At the end of this March, the site was moved over to its new server and has been running so much better. Thank you, thank you bickman2k for all of your hard work and dedication to the site. We are all fortunate to have you as part of our team!
I would also like to thank Shadow Kisuragi for his help with the site's transition. Though he asked me to only thank bickman, I'm sure that he put some time into this project as well. From all of us, a sincere thanks guys! Now onto the top submitters and approvers.
Top submitters for the month with over 100 submissions include:
ApolloBoy - 670
Shadow Kisuragi - 206
raffa1985 - 177
Sauza12 - 153
CoinCollector - 146
thegreatska - 115
and for good measure (so close......) Flee - 97
Top approvers for the month of March were:
Shadow Kisuragi - 586
ApolloBoy - 136
Tynstar - 38
Thanks again to all who submitted and approved this month. Let's work to make April the best month this year.
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This month, the RFGeneration Community Playthrough Group offers you two vastly different gaming options for the retro and modern playthoroughs. If depth, awesome graphics, and portability are your thing, join us on the modern side for the fantastic and adorable.......yes, adorable........RPG Magical Starsign. If camping out in front of the tube, frustrating single-button joysticks, underwhelming graphics, and fierce community competition are you thing join us on the retro side for eight fun and challenging Atari 2600 Activision titles. And if you just love gaming in general, why not join us for both playthroughs by immersing yourself in a great RPG and taking breaks with some frenzied Atari action?
On the modern side we'll be delving into a lesser known RPG for the Nintendo DS. Magical Starsign may seem a little cutesy, and it is, but under that sugar coating is a surprisingly deep science fiction/fantasy adventure. Create your hero/heroine and join his/her group of galactic school of magic classmates as they travel to bizarre, alien worlds in search of their "missing" teacher. The game features a very intricate and challenging combat system and requires heavy use of touch controls, so make sure you have a stylus handy!
Link to Modern Playthrough Thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...topic=13680.msg195065#new
For the Retro Playthrough this month, enjoy some quick and frantic competition against your fellow RFGeneration members as you play two classic Atari 2600 Activision titles each week. We will be holding high score contests weekly for both games and crown our site's own Atari 2600 Activision Champion at the end of the month. There will even be a prize! Games for this month include: Seaquest, Pitfall!, Stampede, Enduro, Kaboom!, Keystone Kapers, Sky Jinx, and Spider Fighter. Even if you don't own a 2600 (though you should!), Activision anthologies and collections, which include all of these titles, are cheap and available on several different platforms. Members, get ready for some truly ole skool, retro gaming!
Link to Retro Playthrough Thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...topic=13681.msg195070#new
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SPECS:
Game: Road Runner
Genre: Action
Year: 1989
Publisher: Atari
Developer: Atari
Designer(s)/Programmer(s): Bob Polaro
Rarity (according to AtariAge): 6 = Rare Plus
Controls: Joystick
Number of Players: 1 - 2 (turn-based)
Average Cost: approx. $10-$20 loose depending on condition
Also Available On: Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, NES, and Atari arcade cabinet.
Tagline/Description: "Imagine yourself as the Road Runner in a Saturday morning cartoon. You are happily whizzing across the desert, racing along that black ribbon of highway. It's glorious! But the cunning Wile E. Coyote is out there somewhere. So watch out! He is planning to smash you to smithereens. He is also scheming to blast you with his ACME cannon in a very sneaky way."
Continue reading Road Runner
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We hope everyone is enjoying playing the Nintendo titles in January's retro and modern playthroughs. Next month we are heading back to the Playstation to play two rather popular titles from their day: Parasite Eve (PSX) and Kingdom Hearts (PS2).
Parasite Eve:
You the participants selected and voted on the PSX game for February and the results are in! Now it's time to join us this month in one of the PSX's most renowned survivial horror games, Parasite Eve. You play as Aya Brea, a rookie New York City cop who witnesses an opera audience gathered at Carnegie Hall spontaneously burst into flames in front of her eyes. She then confronts the evil Melissa Pearce (later known as Eve), an actress and the only other person in the theater that didn't burst into flames, and gets a small clue into the reason behind these events. Along side Aya, you follow pursuit in a means to unravel this riddle, stop the destruction of humanity, and discover what peculiar role you play in these events.
Link to discussion thread here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=13499.0
Kingdom Hearts
King Mickey has been kidnapped and it's up to the player, in the role of Sora, to rescue him! In one of gaming's most amazing crossovers, swing your Keyblade through many magical worlds and encounter countless Disney and Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts. This action RPG has spawned many sequels and earned quite a cult following. Now is your chance to join your fellow community members to either experience the magic for the first time or revisit your old favorite.
Link to discussion thread here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...x.php?topic=13500.new#new
________________________
As always, the playthrough group welcomes your feedback, whether it be positive or negative, on our playthroughs. In the past, we have asked participants to leave feedback at the end of the month on the various playthrough threads, but have received very sparse results. Maybe it's because we are doing an outstanding job, which is a good thing, but regardless, we would like to hear from you. As a result, we have created a new sticky thread with a "suggestion card" that you can cut and paste into the thread and provide us with some feedback. Thread located here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=13495.0. If you are not comfortable sharing your feedback, please send Fleach, grayghost81, techwizard, or myself (singlebanana) a PM. We are anxious to hear from you and hopefully we can increase the participation and fun in our playthroughs.
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The holidays are a time for getting together with family and friends and for taking pleasure in some quality time together. What better way to share holiday memories with them than to enjoy the exciting arcade-style titles featured in this month's Modern and Retro Playthroughs?
This month, the RFGen Retro Community Playthrough takes it to the streets with the classic beat 'em up series, Streets of Rage, for the Sega Genesis. You wanted it, and you got it! We will be playing the entire series, which includes Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage 2, and Streets of Rage 3. Achievements will include a weekly high score contest for each game, an overall total high score contest for the month, and completion/team completion achievements, among others.
Our Modern Community Playthrough takes us from the Streets of Rage to the streets of some anonymous city which is filled with Pizza Huts and the sweet sounds of Bad Religion and The Offspring. Let's get ready to make some crazy money in Crazy Taxi! This playthrough will include weekly crazy box achievements as well as overall high score challenges spanning the entire month!
So crack those knuckes and stretch those fingers because it's time to kick some a#% and bank some fare!
Link to Retro Community Playthrough thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...x.php?topic=13339.new#new
Link to Modern Community Playthrough thread: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=13338.0
Our submissions were slightly up this month from our 2028 total in July and saw an increase of 2730 submissions for the month of September (2620 game submissions and 110 hardware entries). A big thanks to all of you who contributed this month!
Those with over 100 submissions for the month of September include:
Tynstar 789 (TOP SUBMITTER!!!)
CoinCollector 394
Shadow Kisuragi 266
thegreatska 179
Sirgin 161
ericeskapade 139
Nice work guys and please keep those submissions coming in!
September's top three approvers were Shadow Kisuragi (418), Tynstar (266), and Paully3433 (130).
There have been a total of 33,985 submissions in 2013 to date. With 3 more months until the end of the year, we will need a total of 16,015 more submissions to meet our goal of 50,000 (that's approximately 5,339 submissions each month). Let's continue to chip away at it and hit our goal as a community! Thank you.
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As some of you might have seen in the comments section on the September playthrough, I mentioned to Fleach that it might be a good idea to consider running two playthroughs each month, one modern and one classic. Well, we kicked the idea around a little over several PMs and even posted a forum topic to get some feedback on the idea from members. It seems that the majority of those who participated in our poll felt that it would be a good idea and might encourage more participation from a wider variety of collectors. Fleach, Bil, and GrayGhost will continue to host the modern playthrough, while yours truly [and possibly another member] will be responsible for the retro playthrough (me and my big mouth......).
All members new and old are encouraged to participate in a playthrough if you can and we'd really love to have some of you join us for both! We love your feedback on the games and it's a great deal of fun discussing all the ins and outs of gameplay and things we like and don't like about particular titles.
As usual, we are attempting to keep the playthroughs manageable in terms of time played and are trying to pick titles that many of you already own or those that are affordable and somewhat easy to find. The modern playthrough will cover games from the PS2/GC/XBox up to the present, while the retro playthrough will consist of titles from the PS1/N64 and prior. As usual, we are open to any suggestions on titles you might like to play each month and welcome any assistance in determining weekly goals and achievements on the threads or via PM.
So here we are, our first month of October is approaching and what better way to start off our split playthroughs than with a few horror titles. This month, the modern playthrough will be Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon for the Nintendo Wii and the retro playthrough will be Castlevania II: Simon's Quest for the NES. Please join us!
Link to discussion thread and a list of goals and achievements for Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=13029.0
Link to discussion thread and a list of goals and achievements for Castlevania II: Simon's Quest: http://www.rfgeneration.c...topic=13030.msg185483#new
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As some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to come across a nice Atari 2600 lot a few months ago with several very rare and scarce games. Among those titles, was a copy of Wizard's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" ("TCM"). The seller was unaware as to whether the cart was authentic, and actually mentioned this in his auction. I decided that since there were several carts in the auction I needed, I would negate the price of the TCM cart and put in a reasonable offer on the lot at the last minute. Sure enough, I won the lot at an agreeable price and waited patiently by the mailbox the next couple days to claim my spoils.
Continue reading A True Wizard, or Just Another Presto?: Authenticating Your 2600 Wizard Carts
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After pondering the merits of the various paddle titles out there for the Atari 2600, I started thinking about other games that I would recommend for the system. When it comes to Atari 2600 games, value (monetary and fun) or "bang for your buck" is an important factor for beginning collectors and others who primarily collect for other or multiple systems (i.e. without a specific Atari 2600 focus). I tried to narrow the cost down to games that I typically find in the wild for $10 or less, so it will not include those loose $20 copies of Star Raiders that you see on Craigslist.....sorry to disappoint some of you.
I am beginning with a list of my top 25 "bang for your buck" 1-player games and following that up my favorite 10 multi-player games for the system. Multi-player games were the best when I was growing up; back then, we didn't have the internet and I have fond memories of going over to friends' and relatives' houses to play. But,........I digress.
I am also including a list of few other harder-to-find, or more expensive games (yet most of them are still around $20) that I really enjoy playing should you be so inclined to shell out more cash or sweet tradez. None of these recommendations are in any particular order of my preference, I simply compiled this list while going through our database and looking over my collection.
Continue reading Banana's Best Bang For Ya Buck 2600 Games
As most of you know, I recently sold a large lot of Atari 2600 games to help raise a little funding for the site. Our own Razor Knuckles was the proud recipient of this lot and I am happy to say that it greatly bolstered his 2600 collection and has sparked what I have seen as a genuine interest in the system. As an Atari 2600 collector, it makes me smile knowing that others (especially those much younger than me) are still enjoying this system, even though is greatly.....er......"graphically challenged" when compared to more modern systems.
Recently, Razor Knuckles picked up a few more games and some paddle controllers, which he proudly displayed in the "small scores" thread. I asked him to PM me if he wanted some paddle recommendations, but after thinking about it for a bit, I decided that since it had been so long since I posted an Atari review (and to get Zagnorch off my back  ....see I did the wink thing, so it's cool), I would give some opinions on paddle games for the 2600.
Continue reading Up Crap Game Creek With A 2600 Paddle
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Well.....the new year is upon us and time is quickly moving on and due to illness and other such circumstances, sadly, we here in the Thank You Department have gotten a little behind. Though it's been a while since we've posted our monthly shout out to all of you who contributed to the site, we wanted to assure you that your efforts have not gone unnoticed.
First off, I wanted to recognize a few members of our community who have been promoted here at rfgeneration and their new titles. Congratulations to the following members:
Fleach (Blog Contributor)
Duke.Togo (Blog Contributor)
CoinCollector (DB Contributor)
Bildtstar (DB Reviewer)
Nice work guys were are looking forward to good things from all of you!
Continue reading January & February 2013 Thanks!!
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John Dondzila is the founder of Classic Game Creations (CGC), a company that creates homebrew titles for the Vectrex. John currently resides in New Jersey. You can check out his website and purchase his games at: http://www.classicgamecreations.com. John, thanks for your time and for agreeing to do an interview with me.
Continue reading Vectrex Interview Series #3 - John Dondzila
George Pelonis is the founder of Fury Unlimited, a company that creates homebrew titles for the GCE Vectrex home console. George currently resides in Southern California, and programs Vectrex games in his spare time. You can check out his website and purchase his games and controllers at: http://www.furyunlimited.com.
[img width=350 height=400]http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y359/necrom99/Pelonis%20Interview/1.jpg[/img] (In reference to the glasses, he writes, "[I'm] not trying to look cool. Those are just off-the-shelf 3D LCD glasses, like the kind used for home 3D television setups and PC 3D gaming. They were made useful to Vectrex fans by Kevin Horton (creator of the game KevTris) who marketed an adapter which made these glasses work with Vectrex 3D games. An interesting part of this is that it obviously couldn't create the color 3D illusion like GCE's 3D Imager, so you played in 3D monochrome. As long as I wasn't doing anything color-specific, I preferred using this to program 3D Sector-X because it produced less eyestrain.")
Regardless, you still look pretty cool George. Thanks for your time and for agreeing to do an interview with me.
Thank you!
Continue reading Vectrex Interview Series #2 - George Pelonis
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September was another good month of submissions for RFGeneration. Our total submissions went up from 2,962 (August) to 3,334. Out of these new submissions, 3,256 were software and 78 were new hardware. Less than half of the total submissions (1,393) were images, which means that a lot of new content was added to our database!
Continue reading RFG Thanks: September 2012
Dear RFGeneration members, welcome to what I hope to be a series of interviews on homebrew game designers in the VECTREX community. As some of you know, I'm a real proponent of the VECTREX system and it's a large focus of my gaming collection. I vaguely remember the system growing up, but never played one until a few years ago. I was immediately drawn to it, not only because of it's unique look and portability, but because of the vector graphics, which I remember being a huge fan of in the arcades of my youth; Tempest is still one of my all time favorite cabinets.
Though the VECTREX had a very limited amount of original releases, some of which were only playable with the Light Pen and 3-D Imager accessories, the majority of the games are fun and challenging. Due to the small amount of original games, several designers in the homebrew community who have an affection for the VECTREX, have created some great games for the system, some which are originals and others are ports of original vector arcade titles. Kristof Tuts is one of these designers and is the founder of Tutstronix, a company that creates homebrew titles that push the boundaries of the VECTREX console. Kristof currently resides in Belgium and is one of only a handful of designers still creating games for the VECTREX. After ordering a copy of his most recent release, Vector Pilot, I was fortunate enough to get in contact with him for an interview, which I hope you enjoy.
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**Kristof with this son, one of his primary game testers**
Continue reading Vectrex Interview Series #1 - Kristof Tuts
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