Last fall a coworker of mine named Sidd took a vacation to Japan. He had studied abroad there when he was younger and has a deep love for the country and its people. Knowing that my fandom of Japanese culture veers between low-key otaku and hardcore weeb depending on what day it is, Sidd asked me if I'd like him to bring anything back with him from the land of the rising sun. Of course I jumped at the chance to get some authentic souvenirs, but I didn't want to just give him a list of video games to bring back. I enlisted the help of Adam Bickman2k for some ideas. I'd like to thank Adam for his suggestions because without them my list of requests would have consisted of "Game Boy games" and "Godzilla stuff."
Bonus points if you recognize this OG save state device.
Any gamer who has played for a few decades knows the moment; you pick up a favorite from your childhood, a game you put a ton of time into long ago, and now you seem to have lost all skill you once possessed. Maybe your reflexes are strangely different from half a lifetime ago, or you've spent so much time playing other types of games that a particular skill-set has just withered. Either way, gamers my age and older likely know the sad realization of trying to replay an old favorite and just hitting a brick wall.
The Metroidvania has recently become one of my favorite genres, and I'm always on the lookout for more. I figure some others might be in the same boat, so here are 10 games I recommend.
Usually, this spot is a list of the best games on a particular system as voted on by the members of RFGen. It was a project I had hoped would get members of the site talking about their favorite games, and the support it has received has been everything I hoped for.
This month, because of some major personal changes in my life, I knew I wouldn't be able to put the proper time into compiling a list. So I thought it would be fun to reflect on the experience for me, as well as share the surprises that I encountered through making it so far.
Participation has really influenced certain lists, causing major swings at the last moment. That became apparent with the first list, the NES, when the last member to submit a list put TMNT II at #1. Before that vote, the game was looking to destined for an honorable mention, but with the #1 vote it climbed all the way to #11. But that's been one of the awesome parts of doing these lists for me. With a few lists submitted, it seems like things are starting to fall into place, and a few times they have, but other times it seems like the list flips on itself. A fun example of this is Blast Corps place on the N64 list. After the first three lists were in, that was sitting at #1 overall. Obviously it didn't hold, but it did make it fascinating to watch its movement for the rest of that month. It also shows how important the votes are.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled masked grocery store shopping to bring you the August 2020 edition of RF Generation's Site News! In this issue, we announce our September Community Playthrough games, reveal our shoot 'em up club title, and of course, thank those members who sent in submissions to our site and registered approvals last month. Thanks for keeping it on Channel 3 and please continue to keep you and your loved ones SAFE!
REMEMBER: If you have any news about upcoming events or topics that you think the site needs to hear about, please PM singlebanana and put "RFG Site News" in the subject line. Who knows, maybe your news will make our front page!
In the early 90's, when I was a kid, the year 2020 seemed like a far off future that I couldn't imagine. And yet, as an adult, it's here, and it's nothing like I imagined. Where are the flying cars that 1950's and 1960's futurist books promised me? Why is there no space colony on Mars? Why don't we have transporter technology, or replicators from the Star Trek universe yet? Okay, so maybe that last bit is still a couple centuries away, but certainly, the future I saw as a kid is nowhere to be found. Rather, 2020 will probably go down in history as a supreme dumpster fire of a year for more reasons than I care to list.
Instead of focusing on the negativity that has permeated this entire year so far, I thought instead, I'd look to the future, in a roundabout manner, by looking to the past. It's always interesting to see what forward-thinking technologies are invented, marketed, and flop, simply because they're ahead of their time, or people just aren't ready to adopt them yet. By contrast, it's also interesting to think about what the entertainment sphere predicts of the future. Those of us old enough to remember the context of Back to the Future Part II, in particular the scene that sees Marty bragging to a couple young kids that he's pretty good at the Wild Gunman arcade game, will appreciate the irony. In the scene, the kids are seen plugging in an arcade machine, with one exclaiming, "My dad told me about these!" When they couldn't figure out how to play it, Marty McFly picks up the six-shooter light gun and fires away at the screen, only to be told by the kids that having to use your hands was, "like a baby's toy!" Little did the creators of the film realize that the Xbox Kinect peripheral would be a thing in the year 2015, much like they envisioned.
It's a bit hard to believe that it's been 20 years since the first Paper Mario game was released in Japan. As disappointed as I was back then that we weren't getting a sequel to Super Mario RPG (still one of my favorite RPGs of all time), the game we got instead was the next best thing. With a unique new look and a battle system that took a lot of inspiration from its predecessor, the Paper Mario franchise came out of the gate with three excellent titles. Since Super Paper Mario, however, the series has been pretty lackluster. After being sorely disappointed with Sticker Star and put off by the negative reviews of Color Splash, I was hopeful but cautious about the trailers for Origami King. After getting a lot of hands-on time with it over the past couple of weeks, I can say that it doesn't solve all of the problems of those past games, but it gets enough things right that I'm having a lot of fun in this world again.
So I started a new series on my Youtube Channel where I make commercials for various video game items. I have 3 videos currently out which include, The NES Controller, the SNES Controller, and the game StarTropics for NES.
I will be expanding to other consoles and games in the future. I have also enlisted some of my friends to do guest VoiceOvers on the episodes.
It's here! Time to dive into Jak 3! Thanks to the evolution of this review I now know how I'm going to be handling Perfect Sequels videos in the future. I expected this review to be a lot shorter, and thus expected to be finished with it sooner. Most of the gameplay would have been covered by the last video, so all I would have to do to review Jak 3 would be to cover the new stuff, give a short story description and then call it a day, right? After seeing that my original take on the story was incorrect, I soon realized that a short review wouldn't cut it.
In this month's episode, the Playcast and the Shoot the Corecast join forces with Cammy and her Anti-Robot Special Forces to take on an onslaught of robot terrorists in Psikyo's Cannon Spike on the Sega Dreamcast. Rich (singlebanana), Shawn (GrayGhost81), Josh (MetalFRO) and Addicted discuss the ends and outs of this wannabe twin-stick shooter and determine whether this pricey title is one that you need to add to your collection. During the Concertcast segment, the guys choose three bands/artists that they would like to see if breakups and deceased members were no obstacle. We are extremely excited to present this RF Generation site podcast crossover as we play through this action packed title. Ask yourself, are YOU ready for Baby Mode?
As always, we are happy to hear your thoughts on the games we play our discussion page (linked below). We will respond to your comments and are always happy to discuss the games in more detail. Please be sure to rate and write a review of the show on iTunes and/or Podbean to help us increase our listenership. Thanks for the listen, we hope you enjoy the show!
While I consider myself to be a fan of the 'Metroidvania' genre, admittedly I feel like I haven't played a ton of them and have probably missed out on some that are considered among the best of the genre. Timespinner is one such game that had caught my eye due to its art style and positive reception, and the game's availability via Game Pass meant there were no excuses for not checking this game out. Unfortunately, the game leaving Game Pass in mid-July is what it took to motivate me to finally play it, but I was disappointed and am glad I finally gave this one a try.
Developed by Lunar Ray Games and published by Chucklefish, Timespinner is an action-adventure platformer RPG (Metroidvania) that takes heavy inspiration from the classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Initially crowdfunded through Kickstarter, the game was released on September 25, 2018 for the PS4, PC, and PS Vita, and was later released on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The game has been met with mixed to positive reception overall.
Primordia is a point and click adventure game developed by Wormwood Studios and published by Wadjet Eye Games. The game was released on PC in 2012 and received an iOS port in 2016. Point and click adventures really thinned out after roughly the year 2000, but came back quite strongly after a combination of mobile touch screen controls on Nintendo's DS helped developers reach a massive audience, and the rise of digital distribution on PC. The sparse and largely silent scene on PC started to revitalize with modern design sensibilities. The growth of Steam also helped with visibility as many stores were significantly downsizing their physical shelf space for PC games. Digital storefronts are largely immune from this problem.
Primordia is a post-apocalyptic game. But, it goes a bit further than most others and has gone post-human. After the extinction of mankind only robots walk the earth. Players control a humanoid robot named Horatio Nullbuilt and his hand built sidekick Crispin Horatiobuilt. The robots have a patronymic naming system, being given a first name by those who build them, and their last name tells the world who built them. Horatio has some amnesia, he's the fifth version of himself and cannot remember his previous versions. His internal data corruption has affected his name, so it remains partially undefined.
