Blogger Archive: TraderJake 
Nintendo seems to be creating a niche market for ultra violent games, or at least games more violent than would have been seen on the GameCube. No More Heroes was amazing, and if you haven't played it you should check it out. Blueberry Cheese Brownie, anyone? What about Manhunt 2? Sure, it's (apparent) crap, but it's still super violent. Other violent games? Well, I can't think of any, except for one more that was just announced.
Turns out Platinum Games has a Wii title coming out called Mad World. Platinum Games, does that ring a bell to anyone? No? How about Clover Studios? In the mighty progression of development houses, it goes Clover -> Seeds -> Platinum Games. So, Platinum Games essentially created amazing games like Okami and Viewtiful Joe. I hope that you've played those games, especially Okami. Okami is everything that Zelda should have been. Too bad the Wii version of Okami doesn't make any references to the original developers, since one should always give credit where it is due, and well, Clover Studios created a masterpiece.
So, yes, I digress. There is a new game coming out from Platinum Games fort the Wii. It's called Mad World. Styled much like Sin City. It looks beautiful, and very violent. I urge you to do yourself a favor and check the game, after the jump. Be Warned, it's very violent.
Continue reading Nintendo now has a Niche Market for ultra violent Games: UPDATE
[img align=right]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-044/ss/ts/U-044-S-01090-A.jpg&sizex=200[/img]Wow, Europe gets screwed with games. At least, they did in the past. Nintendo has been pretty hard towards them, but then, they still are. But wow, you readers in Europe (all 4 of you) got screwed. SCREWED! Need a refresher as to why you should think you've been screwed? Check out this article. This list makes me a sad panda. You've missed out on so much awesome, and when you do get awesome, it's often months later than the rest of us. What a cruel world it is.
I can't believe that my top two SNES games never got released in Europe. It's also sad that nine of the ten things the article mentions are for Nintendo systems. Nintendo clearly has it out for you, except, you should celebrate that you guys never got the Virtual Boy, rather than mourn it. Some things are better off not released, and this headache machine is one of them.
So, Europe, I feel you pain after seeing that list. Is this list spot on, or are there glaring omissions from the list? All I know is that after seeing that list, you have my sympathy.
Import Tax: Best Games Never Released In Europe [British Gaming Blog, via GoNintendo]
As you may or may not know, RF Generation is run by a bunch of people who share a common interest when it comes to providing our little community with the best darn collection tools and games database out there. We try very hard to do this for everyone, but, at times there are certain issues that befall the site. Unfortunately, the last three days consisted of some of those issues.
Needless to say, we're back, and now that we know why we went down we shall be doing everything in our power to make sure it doesn't happen again. We're in the business of trying to provide the best product possible to you, our community, but this downtime has undermined our ability to do so.
We hope that this is the last major occurrence of downtime that we'll be seeing for a while. As I mentioned, we understand why the site went down, and have taken measures to ensure that it does not happen again. We thank you for your patience and understanding during this downtime, and we hope that you'll continue to keep it tuned here to channel three, a site by gamers, collectors, and the average joe, for gamers, collectors, and the average joe.
Sincerely,
David Murnan
Site Director, RF Generation
Ed Note: This article was written right after our site came back up around April 8, but it still applies.
After a week of being in a “bricked” state, we’re on our way to coming back to normal. You may be wondering why we were down for a week, let me tell you why.
On Monday, March 31, we noticed that the site was running a bit slow, in true fashion on our server. I thought it would be a good idea to let our host know that the site was running slow, and as such I sent a ticket to our host asking them to look into it, as we have in the past. Well, I thought everything would go just like it has in the past… boy, was I wrong.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008. A high holy day on RF Generation. We’re a big fan of the day, and we tend to go over the top. Well, we did our thing, and I went to sleep. I went to class in the morning, only to get a message from Tynstar letting me know that “the site was down.” Now, we do our jokes on April 1, but we generally don’t brick our site (we learned better… thanks Pretty Generation). So, imagine my surprise when I find out, via my close personal friend who you may know as The Black Perl or Database Director that our host has said that we’ve exceeded our resources, and as such bricked our forum database. To get that database back, we had to pretty much disable the site while we “found a solution”.
See, the thing is… we were on a bona-fide overseller… someone who promises the world for a low price. We were aware of this fact, but we stayed on the site because the ride has for the while been a smooth sailing. Well, that ended Tuesday, when our host realized that we were using the server to its fullest ability. Never mind the fact that for weeks it “was not our problem” when the site was unresponsive as heck. But, our host either had some pariah or just wanted a scapegoat to blame for the issues… that happened to be us. After fighting with our host for over a day, we got our databases back, and we came to a decision.
We decided to move hosts. The time of risking it on a shared host needed to end, and we made the choice to move to a virtual private server (VPS). A VPS is the solution in between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. It takes a while to set these servers up, so we were down for the time that we’ve seen. But, we’re back, and we’re pleased as punch that you’re still here.
Some of you have asked about how they could help. Our server costs have officially quadrupled. So yeah, donations are probably going to be accepted. We’re not going to run donations year round, but at strategic points during the year. More info on that later, but for now, just know that our focus is getting the site back to 100% operation and continuing to serve you, our community.
We want to thank you all for your patience during our downtime. At this time, the future looks bright, and we certainly hope that you continue to keep it tuned to channel 3.
Sincerely,
David Murnan
Site Director, RF Generation
[img align=right]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-044/bf/U-044-S-01500-A.jpg&sizex=200[/img]
I am a huge Earthbound Fan, and each passing week where Mother 3 is not released makes me a sad panda. If you are interested as to how much I enjoyed Earthbound, why not check out its game page? Feel the love, and I hope that you've played the game.
What? You say that you have not? That's okay, many other people have not played this amazing game. Fortunately for you, Nintendo has apparently decided to release it for the Virtual Console, at least that's what the ESRB says. Personally, that makes me excited. Perhaps Nintendo will not be a whore and release Mother 3. I don't know, but I'll be content knowing that a new group of people will have the opportunity to try this amazing game.
ESRB Rates Earthbound For Wii VC [Kotaku]
You know what happens when your April Fools joke is horribly cut short by your old web host? The answer is, that we at RF Generation get rather irked. You see, we at RF Generation see April Fools as a high holy day. We really, really enjoy April Fools, and well, our old host suspending our site made us a bunch of sad pandas.
Thankfully, our April Fools joke was geriatric in nature. One of the aspects of old age lends itself nicely to our predicament. Old people, unfortunately for them, tend to lose track of things, including the date. So, surprise! Happy May Fools!
We’d like to thank everyone who was involved in our little joke, especially our resident graphic artist den68. He kicks ass. We thought about waiting until next year to show off Geriatric Generation, but doing this joke on May 1 probably led to a WTF moment for lots of people, which is exactly what we wanted to do, because we at RF Generation like to have our fun.
Of course, Geriatric Generation is the latest in a long line of April Fools Jokes, and I can almost guarantee that come next April First, there will be a whole new experience to be had. Between then and now, there might be other new things. We don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I hear that if you give us a shrubbery we might be more inclined to add stuff. Strike that. Two shrubberies.
From all of us at RF Generation, keep it glued to channel three!
After months of consideration and planning, RF Generation has decided to change its theme to something more contemporary. One can look out in the realm of gamers and collectors and see that these hobbies are drawing an older crowd than in years past. Just look at the recent success of the Wii. I don't know what my grandparents would do if they could not get their Wii Sports Bowling. It's just like the real thing, except with a greatly diminished chance of injury. Thank Nintendo and other developers for given the older generations something new and exciting to do. Certainly, they are visionaries.
In the spirit of the ever increasing number of older gamers, RF Generation will now be known as Geriatric Generation. We feel that this new direction will not only appeal to a new populous, but also increase our financial solvency in the long term, thanks to sponsorships by amazing products like Viagra, Medic Alert, and Depend, amongst many more. Certainly, we ask that you check out and use their amazing products. I know I certainly will when the need arises.
What does this change to Geriatric Generation mean to you, our readers and members? Well, in the short term, you'll still have access to our databases and your collection tools, and the forums will still exist. As time progresses though these tools will be tweaked to be better in tuned with our new core audience, as well as several new tools shall be added to offer our new core audience reason to stick around. Personally, I am really proud of the collaboration we are soon to roll out in conjunction with AARP. Soon you'll be able to pick out which games the AARP recommends that you, the older gamer, should play. That's just one of many new things to roll out in the coming week, and certainly, we're excited.
We certainly hope that you understand our decision to change format, and we hope this development will not cause us to lose you as a member or reader. Be sure to keep checking out Geriatric Generation, and by all means, don't forget to check the Weather Channel on your Wii.
Gamegavel's wanting to give away $500. It's pretty simple. All you need to do is become a verified sellers, and wait for 1000 verified sellers to exist on the site.
Why not do it? Sell something on Game Gavel. You might just win something in the long run.
Good Luck!
Ed Note: Fixed the link to go to gamegavel, rather than our site. Who the hell wants to visit this site anyways?
Four years, has it really been that long? Wow… April 28, 2004 does and does not at the same feel far away. Needless to say, we at RF Generation have weathered the long storm, and we’re not four years old. Look at how we’ve grown. From just a few members to 1700 members, from a couple thousand games to over 35000 games, from no hardware records to over 2000 hardware records, etc… the site has sure grown. Certainly, we’re proud of how our little slice of the internet has grown, and we wish for it to grow for years to come.
It’s been a long time since we’ve sent out one of these newsletters. I intended on sending one out every year on April 28, but our previous host suspended our account when someone flagged our newsletter as spam. It’s cool though, we’re still here, and no hard feelings. Haven’t been around for a while? Let me clue you in to some of the things that have happened since I’ve last sent one of these out:
- Hardware Database: What? A hardware database? That’s right, RF Generation now has a hardware database. It’s a lovely thing, and you can even add hardware records to your collection. Of course, the new database is always hungry… hungry for more submissions! So, if hardware is your thing, than boy do we have a database for you.
- Submission Script: The Submit Missing Games Here Thread is Dead! Long live the Submit Missing Games Here Thread. Seriously though, most every submission is handled through this lovely submission script, which has been recoded in the last two years about 4 times. It’s amazing what one can do when they learn more PHP. Games or hardware released in only certain countries of a region… we can add those. Game ratings… we can add those. Easy variation additions… we can add those. Certainly, our little submission script has turned into one complex monster.
- Site Redesign: Last year on June 8, we rolled out our new site layout. I must say, it looks rather nice, and well, I do enjoy the fact that we’re using CSS to the fullest extent now. With the site redesign came an about section for our site as well as a (still yet to be fully realized) features section. Also, we redid the front page news script so that it behaves a bit more like a blog script would. (read: you can be selective with what you read and comment on news stories)
- Community Blogs: Some of you may find this idea reprehensible. Others may find it cool, but if you want you can make a blog at RF Generation. Don’t like the idea of calling it a blog, call it then your collection find log. Or, just stick to the other areas of the site.
- True Image Search: We switched to being mySQL driven in the last two years. Oh… yeah, I didn’t mention that, but we did. We had a true image search before the mySQL switch, but it went away once we moved to mySQL. Well, after a lot of coding, it’s back, and better than ever.
- Countless Collection Script Improvements: Have an idea for the collection script? Chances are that the Black Perl will in fact listen to your request and add it into the script. It’s happened so many times in the past two years that well, I just can’t name them all. Did you know you could have a banner showing off your collection stats? How about being able to set a specific folder to being an “owned” folder or “for sale” folder? These things are just a few of many additions to your collecting needs.
So yeah, that’s a not so short list of things we’ve added in the last two years. Still reading? Good, I was afraid that we may have lost you. So, today marks our fourth birthday. To celebrate, we’re having a contest! It involves being the best submitter possible, and to learn more about this contest… well, I guess that you’ll have to visit the site for more information. Did I mention that there was swag to be won for first through third place in our contest? It’s true. SWAG! MUST PLAY! Good luck to those who decide to go all out in our little contest.
Four years. Now is the time to celebrate! Eat! Drink! Be Merry! May RF Generation have many more years of happiness. We only hope that you all continue to be a part of our community and come along for the ride. After all, there’s always more to come when you put it on channel three.
This year, we turn 4, and well, being four means that we’re still in our toddler years, and as a toddler one may say that we can be quite the terror. You love us, right? You want free stuff, right? Good, because once a year we like giving crap away. Good deal, isn’t it? I think so. So, what is it that you need to do? Here’s the rules of the contest:
Submissions, they make the site go round. We just don’t grow if we do not have anyone submit stuff. Funny how that works, and well, we do have one heck of a community that loves to do submissions. Perhaps, with this contest, you’ll be interested in doing submissions as well. Submissions will garner you points, and these how are they are ranked:
Title Addition: 4 Points
Variation Addition: 4 Points
Page Edit*: 2 Points
Review*: 10 Points
Overview*: 6 Points
Image Upload: 10 Points
Submission Review**: 1 Point
Blog Post*: 10 Points
Blog Comment: 1 Point
Forum Post: 1 Point
Forum Karma: See Explanation
*Regarding the asterisk: For page edits, it is noticed that you are consistently only adding one field per edit multiple times for a single ID just to up your points, you will be disqualified. Any review or overview completed will count as a page edit as well the points for an overview or review. To get the points for an overview or review you MUST contact me via Personal Message so that I can keep a tally. A review or overview of poor quality could result in less points than stated being granted. The same statement holds true for blog posts.
Because we want the forum to be a lively place of fun and interesting posts, we’re enabling Karma during this contest. Karma rewards members that make good posts and smites those who do not. Your Karma will play a wildcard role in posts. Positive Karma at the end of the contest will increase your point total by a factor, while negative karma will decrease it. The equation used to decide how karma affects your points will be announced at a later date before the end of the contest.
As with any contest, there is fine print. Any submission that you make must adhere to the RF Generation guidelines / policies. We wrote these policies and guidelines for a reason, and well, we’d like everyone to adhere to them. Failure to adhere to the guidelines could result in a disqualification.
Any point reduction or disqualification can be contested. In the event that you wish to contest, you must explain why the reduction or disqualification is unfair. If you win the contest, we’ll restore your greatness, but if you lose, you shall be pelted with figurative rocks and garbage.
**KICKER! Normally, staff members could not be involved in these contests. That is no longer the case! Everyone, except for the directors of this site, is in this contest. There is a catch though for staff members… their final score will be halved. So, that should lead to a lively competition. I think halving their scores is fair, and I hope you do as well. Oh yeah, there is that 1 point for a submission review, that unfortunately only applies to staff members because they are the poor souls who must review your submissions.
What do you win? Well, we’re a poor bunch here at RF Generation, especially after the server move. That said, there are prizes for the first, second, and third place winners!
FIRST PLACE: Gaming swag not to exceed $100 and also a groovy RF Generation ringer T.
SECOND PLACE: Gaming swag not to exceed $25 and also a groovy RF Generation ringer T.
THIRD PLACE: A groovy RF Generation ringer T
Also, anyone in the top 5% of points gainers shall get some sort of recognition, to be determined later.
So when does this contest start? TODAY, APRIL 28, 2008. When does this contest end? SUNDAY, JUNE 8, 2008 AT MIDNIGHT (late Saturday night). So have your cake and eat it too! Happy submitting!
[img align=right width=225]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/repository/5591257414803e11b6edd7cynical_atari.jpg[/img]There are many big developers out there. Such Behemoths as Activision, Nintendo, and the evil empire we know as EA. Love or hate, these behemoths tend shape the future of the gaming world, for better or worse. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ll have the fallen angels, where certain companies have just fallen out of favor. Such is the story for Atari. No, not the old Atari that was cool and caused the video game collapse in the 80s, but the current, sad, sorry Atari that was originally Infogrames / Hasbro Interactive. What went wrong, and what the hell are you doing?
Atari, you have some decent franchises. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. Chris Sawyer was a genius, and the fact that the first game was the number one seller the year it came out proved it. Too bad then that you took the series and combined it with shit in Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. A sequel, nah, that was a castration. You tried to make better with the third game in the series, but while it was fun it was a resource hog that slowed to a crawl when your park became too large. Good job destroying that franchise.
Recently, you almost lost your license for Dragonball Games. For you, that certainly would have sucked, as your Budokai games are actually pretty fun. They are perhaps the only gems that are not tarnished in your crown by pieces of shit like My Horse and Me. Is that even proper English? I believe that it should be “My Horse and I”. Great job promoting the further castration of the English Language, in a world where the internet is destroying the written language you’re doing your part by influencing little girls who are too small to use the internet. In time, they’ll join the rest of us on the internet, creating some hideous MySpace page with the welcome statement “Like O My Gawd I am liek so Happy that u r here!” What a sick sad world it is. Thankfully, the economy has collapsed, so these bubblegum girls aren’t going to be able to hide in McMansions anymore. Thank God, perhaps they’ll learn what their poor English will get them in terms of a job. Do you think “Would you like Fries with that?” is hard for them to learn? I don’t think so, but I digress.
Atari, you’re a lost cause. Try as you might, but you’ll never be a behemoth in the gaming world. It’s funny though, because you do try. You took Phil Harrison from Sony. What the hell? You’re supposed to go out in a blaze of glory, taking the Infogrames stock price with you! But you must not realize that, or perhaps you do, and you just want to ruin poor ol’ Phil. Phil seems to be such a nice guy though, it isn’t as though he’s the one known for “RIIIIIIIDGGEEEE RAAACCER!” No, that’d be Kaz Hirai. What? You say you wanted that guy? I am sure that with enough money you can get him. I am sure Sony wouldn’t mind to have Phil back, and we’d be happy to see you go down in flames without him.
It’s time for you to smell the roses, Atari. Your time is over, and it’s time for new companies to grow out of your decomposed remains.
It is noted that a lot of thought came about regarding the structure of the English language from just writing this article. We really wish our resident grammar Nazi, known to the RFG Community as Arrrhaloymnn was around to give his perspective. There’s nothing quite like a native Dutch Speaker giving a native English speaker his perspective on English grammar. Oh well.
We'd like to apologize for the recent downtime. A combination of events made things turn south here at RF Generation. At this time, most things are back, but we're feverishly going to attempt to bring back most everything. In the process, we're trying very hard to optimize existing processes so that your visit to RF Generation is a pleasant and quickly loading experience.
It's possible that you might find parse errors on occasion while we try to fix things. The site also may become unresponsive late at night, but it might not. We hope to get things running 100% as soon as possible.
Did you know that RF Generation has a chat? If you happened to visit while we were down, you may have seen the giant link to the RF Generation Chat right there on the front page being proudly displayed while the rest of the site was bricked. It appeared to work well, with a healthy group of people showing up in chat. Now that we're back though, that's all been washed out.
If the previous paragraph did not make it clear - RF Generation has a chat. It's hosted on quakenet, a popular IRC Network where we don't have to worry about the chat overloading our server. Don't have an IRC Client? No Problem! Our chat page has a Java IRC Client that will log you in straight to our channel, where you can chat with fellow RF Genners and pay respect to our secret op, Malygris. Certainly, there's fun times to be had, the question though is... why are you not there?
Join the chat! Kill time! Talk about your latest find! Talk about that game you love! Join the Zombie meme! We don't care, but we know one thing - it'd be a lot more exciting with you in the chat!
Whew. It's been over a week since we went offline, on April 1st of all days. It's good to be back. You might be wondering why we left. Let us delve into the abbreviated version of what happened... the long version will come later.
RF Generation has grown at a steady rate over the past 4 years. (can you believe we've been here for almost 4 years?) Well, last week, we learned that we had in fact outgrew our host. For that reason, we had to find a new host as quickly as possible. Today, we're on that new host, and we're pleased as punch to be in the realm of not quite dedicated hosting and out of the realm of shared hosting.
That's the short version. We'd like to thank our old host for two years of hosting at an affordable rate, and we look forward to our bright future with our new host!
PS: Everything except for images should be working.
[img align=right width=250]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/repository/116598339947f01bc0747fdwifi_failure.gif[/img]Nintendo. They like making money. They could make so much more money if they had a viable online system. Microtransactions also print money, so it boggles my mind that Nintendo has opted for the castrated Online Plan. To Nintendo, it's better to assume that everyone is 6 than their actual age, and for that reason most people would call the system... subpar. Not exactly a fun experience to play online, especially if you want to try to hook up with your friends.
Slate decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it needed to tell the world that Nintendo's Online Plan is in fact, "a smashing failure." So, yeah, good job there Slate, where have you been for the last 3 years. I could have said that back when the DS was going online. Friend Codes are in fact, absolute rubbish. Poorly executed Smash Bros. with anyone online games is in fact, absolute rubbish. Tantalizing Wii owners with the prospect of only one Wii Friend Code only to find out that every damn game still has its own way of doing online, is rubbish.
So, where have you been, Slate? I conject that you must have been really far away not to realize this cold reality years ago. How was the stay on the third rock from Alpha Centari, Slate, because clearly for the last few years you were nowhere near Earth.
Oh, you say that you were? Perhaps then you just are late to the obvious, or you're just out of touch with gaming in general. The only reason I've heard of you is because Kotaku mentions you. Perhaps you should just... um... keep quiet about games.
Smashing Failure [Slate, via Kotaku]
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