Being a big fan of JRPGs and the Final Fantasy series in particular since the 16-bit era, both Final Fantasy IV and VI (or II and III as we knew them at the time) are two of my all-time favorite games. Little did I (or pretty much anyone else in the west) know at the time that there was a whole other Final Fantasy game released for the SNES that we missed out on and wouldn't officially get for several years. I eventually played Final Fantasy V via the Final Fantasy Anthology collection for the PlayStation, but this was nearly 20 years ago, and I remember virtually nothing from that playthrough. It has been nagging at me for years that I should revisit this game, so I finally fired up the GBA release and replayed what was considered a missing link in the Final Fantasy series for years.
In 2008, Konami released the newest game in their long running Castlevania franchise, Order of Ecclesia, for the Nintendo DS. This series is one of the last remaining relics of the 8-bit era that is still receiving new entries in a similar style to its original games. Castlevania started as a 2D side scrolling action platformer, and with Order or Ecclesia that same bedrock foundation is still present.
Since the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in 1997, the series has been adding elements borrowed from role playing games, such as experience, levels, equipment, enemy drops, and some form of a secondary progression system. This formula was wildly successful early on. After the release of Symphony of the Night, similar games would primarily release on Nintendo's handheld consoles, with three Castlevania games each releasing for the Game Boy Advance and DS. A couple of 3D experiments with the formula were tried on the Playstation 2, but these did not have the same level of polish or fun factor the handheld games had. Order of Ecclesia would be the penultimate game in this style from Konami, and the last of its fully single player games in this 2D style. All of this ends up making Order of Ecclesia the swan song for one of Castlevania's two major eras.
I've been nerding out on music for as long as I can remember. I was raised on classic rock and grew into alternative music in my teenage years. In my twenties, I dropped the elitist indie blinders I had developed in high school and grew a sincere love for pop music. When I was in my early thirties, I worked at a company with a couple of other music nerds who where older than me and for years we bonded over music and shared our discoveries with each other. During that time, for the first time, I began keeping current with the best and worst albums released in a given year (and sharing my picks with those old coworkers is a tradition that we maintain to this day). Now, I have the #concertcast, which is the music segment of the RFG Playcast, which you hopefully know as the podcast I do with the singlebanana. What you are about to read is my first public albums of the year list.
2019 was probably the personal best year for gaming that I have had in a very long time. I played nearly all of the NES games for the RFGen NES Challenge for fun (and even finished some), got a new game system (a year earlier than anticipated), and per usual ended up playing a completely different subset of gaming than I anticipated. So, please join me as I take a final look over 2019 as we take our first steps into this year.
It is the 20's and there is time for Kla- er, couch cooperative gaming!
Hi gang, and welcome to 2020! Wow, it is so weird (when you are my age) to realize we are finally here, and it looks very little like what all those books, movies, and games told us the future would be like. Some stuff, like VR and autonomous cars, aren't quite where we thought they would be, but we do all pretty much carry around a Star Trek Tricorder in our pockets that we use to look at cat pictures, so there is that.
For my first write-up of the year (or decade, depending on how you decide to measure it, I know the "official" start is next year but we are all going to hear that we are in the 20s now) I figured I'd make a fun little update list of the excellent couch-cooperative Switch games we recently enjoyed. The Christmas/New Year break gave us some great gaming opportunities and couch-coop is a perfect way to get various skill levels able to play simultaneously.
This list is laughably by no means comprehensive, but does reflect games we play at our place and can personally vouch for.
In Episode 019, Addicted and MetalFRO take a critical look at the Konami shooter, Otomedius Excellent. A spiritual successor to the Parodius series, and heavily inspired by the Gradius games, we dig into what works, what doesn't, and what bothers us about this title, as well as looking at how cultural differences can sometimes affect perception of a game, and its design, throughout the world. We hope you'll enjoy the discussion!
Posted on Jan 12th 2020 at 01:00:00 PM by (Pam) Posted under video, top 10
2019 has been a great year for games, it was a struggle to narrow this list down to just 10 of the 31 releases I played this year. But I did it. Here are my top 10 games of 2019.
If anyone's interested, here are all the 2019 releases I played (didn't necessarily finish them all though):
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you the December 2019 edition of RF Generation's Site News! In this issue, we will announce our February Community Playtrough game of the new year and a special segment of the Playcast for our listeners, unveil the next game for our site shoot 'em up club, set a reminder for our upcoming Site Donation Drive, 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. Happy New Year to all of our members; may all of your video game resolutions come to fruition!
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!
[img width=700 height=393]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81hyAlSYb0L.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from Amazon.
I started a tradition a few years back, where I pick a "new to me" indie game, and play it on New Year's Day, in an attempt to either beat it on day one, or see how far I can get, then continue with that game, until I can beat it. New Year's Day 2015, I played through Shovel Knight, and ended up beating the game in a single day, which I was very pleased with. The following January 1st, I played Freedom Planet, which was a much longer game, and also fairly difficult in spots, so I didn't manage to take it down that day. The following year, I sunk my teeth into Axiom Verge, and while I sort of knew it wouldn't be a one day game, my first time through, I managed to knock it out in just 4 days, and it has since become one of my favorite games of the last decade. Unfortunately, due to moving for a job, I was unable to keep this tradition going in 2018, but January 1st, 2019 heralded the return, with me taking on The Messenger and really enjoying that experience, despite some frustration with the precision platforming, and my own meager skills.
Hey guys Russ Lyman here, and I'm excited to share with you another custom controller I made. I love DIY stuff, and creating something new out of something old. My friend MegaDan29 reached out to me to make him a controller themed to his favorite NES game Punch Out. I brainstormed for a bit, and released the simplest solution. Lets make it look like a boxing glove. I used a two part clay called Apoxie Sulpt to shape most of the controller, and YES it still functions. Its a little awkward to hold, but you can still use it. If you want to see a more detail build of the controller check out my full YouTube video on it here. ____________________________________________________
**Please join us in welcoming our newest staff member to the front page, Russlyman. Russ is a long-time member of RF Generation and we are looking forward to all of his awesome video gaming DIY content! - singlebanana**
Call it a new year's resolution, call it an epiphany, call it whatever you want, but I decided I wanted to do things a little differently this year. It seems like every year I say to myself "life is busy, I didn't play as much as I wanted." But rather than ape that sentiment yet again, I figured it would be better to turn it into an opportunity. The games industry is more than just the games themselves. I feel that most people who love video games naturally share an interest in the ancillary aspects of the business. And so, in that spirit, these are the most notable things about the games industry to me in 2019. The good, the bad, the ugly, and sometimes, the infuriating. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, so feel free to let me know what you thought about any of the items listed here, or if there was something else about the year in games you felt was particularly worthy of attention.
To get straight to the point, we did not make our goal of beating every North American licensed NES game in the year 2019. Is that a disappointing outcome? Heck no! We ended up conquering 514 of the 669 game list in a single year. We had 30 members participate throughout the year! Some of which I havn't really had a good opportunity to interact with before and it gave me a chance to get to know them better. Beyond those 30 players we had several other members offer advice and support and simply cheer us on. Even though we fell short at the end we had an incredible time exploring new worlds, gritting our teeth over challenging areas, mashing buttons faster than ever before and most importantly, sharing our accomplishments with our peers.
It was quite heartwarming to see people scratch games off their backlog, overcome childhood hurtles and discover new favorites. Every game is not a winner, but I do feel there is something valuable to learn even from playing a stinker. I hope that every player feels that the time they invested in this community challenge was as worthwhile as I did. Whether you joined us for 1 game or 100 I'm incredibly thankful for your participation.
With 2019 coming to a close, we can expect to see all the obligatory GOTY lists rolling in. Rather than do the usual Top 10 GOTY list myself, I wanted to reflect on all the games I played instead of just the new releases. 2019 turned out to be a very productive year for me gaming-wise, as my number of games beaten for the entire year sits at 125 games, so I wanted to do more of a stream-of-consciousness reflection of the highlights from my year.
In 2010, one of the fastest rising games in terms of popularity on the planet was Minecraft. Ten years later and one of the biggest games on Earth is... still Minecraft. An insane number of people have bought and played this game since its days in early alpha, and now its had well over a decade of continuous development. Minecraft continues to get some major updates long after its official 1.0 release that brought it out of its beta. So, what are some of the changes that have come over the years? And how have these updates and continuous development kept both a large number of long time players interested, and continued to bring in new players?
