[img width=419 height=600]http://i65.tinypic.com/sdo41j.jpg[/img] *Geoffrey from Gina Martin on Twitter*
Ah, the Budget Wall. There were bad games, good games (theoretically), and a lot of important lessons for a child to learn. But when I mentioned and briefly described this place to my thirteen year-old and he gave me kind of a blank look, I realized that this might need something more than a brief description, especially since this may perhaps be a more regional or even temporal phenomenon than I originally thought. So, here is an explanation of the Budget Wall, as well as some of the history that I have had during its time in my life.
Folks on this site likely know the feeling; You and three 'friends' are in a heated Super Smash Bros. Melee when someone cries out, "My "R" button isn't working! Hey guys, wait!" Or that heated Joust versus match with the controller that just doesn't 'flap' as fast, or the time you were excited to show off your rare Sega CD Snatcher on one of the four days of the week that the drive tray doesn't want to work...
If you are a retro gamer that plays as well as collects, you know the effort it takes to upkeep your library. Vintage video game collecting is like classic car collecting or pinball machine collecting; it's more than just having space for the stuff and the ability to find and pay for the games and hardware. If it is going to remain playable, there's some know-how and some elbow grease that will become part of the hobby. From notorious controller wear and faulty optical drives, to analog drift and bad capacitors, every retro player/collector has to get comfortable with just how far down the rabbit hole they are going to go. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to have a passion for a console that seems immune to all but psyonic attacks (SNES, Game Boy Color) or maybe you've fallen for a glass snowflake (Famicom Disc System, a Turbo Duo with good sound), but either way there is always some basic maintenance needed.
The original StarTropics is a game I have a long history with. I got it as a gift for my first communion when I was 8 or 9-years old and it quickly became a favorite. I'd spend full days playing it. It's a Zelda clone, but I never played Zelda as a kid, so I didn't find that out until much later. In 1994, a sequel came out - Zoda's Revenge. Releasing so late in the NES lifecycle, it's a game many missed, myself included. In July, I finally sat down to play through it. While it looks remarkably similar, some updates to the gameplay have been made. Here are my thoughts on the game and whether it lives up to the original.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you August 2018's edition of RF Generation's Site News! In this issue, we unveil our September 2018 community playthrough title, announce the next game for our site shoot 'em up club, promote our current Pain Yourself With Submissions Contest, provide you with our Twitch channel updates, direct you to our new site Wiki, 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!
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!
As many of you may be aware, I came very late to the Zelda party. In fact, one might say I crashed the party. I tried to get in many times over the years, but it seemed as though the DJ never played my tune. Or in my case, the songs being spun just didn't grab me until I finally understood the lyrics. Whatever the case, The Legend of Zelda finally clicked with me when playing the original game for the August 2016 RF Generation Play Through, and I further cemented my newfound appreciation for the series when I played this game, in January 2017. I revisit it again here for this video review, and still find myself enchanted.
What was your first Legend of Zelda experience, and better yet, when did the magic capture you? Which game was it, and what about it captivated you?
With the rising costs associated with retro gaming many are turning to flash carts. These carts allow the flashing (writing to the cart) of unaltered ROMs allowing them to be played on original hardware. Igor Golubovskiy better known as Kirkzz has created a line of flash carts called Everdrives whose console spectrum covers the NES all the way up to the N64. Igor's creations are praised for their reliability and ability to work with console libraries. I recently purchased a variant of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive called the Mega Everdrive X5 and put it through it's paces.
With each passing year, my game collection grows, and with it my gaming backlog. I used to think I would eventually make time for all the games I wanted to play, but the older I get, the more my thinking changes. The most recent of these evolutions has been to start thinking about making some tough decisions. I'm starting to think I may have to let some games go, at least for the foreseeable future, in the interest of making it clear which games really matter to me. Part of the reason I find it daunting to hack away at my backlog is simple choice paralysis. So to help make those decisions and to cope with a certain level of resignation, I've decided not to make this yet another "oh whoa is me I'll never get to my pile of shame" post, but to instead work through some kind of prioritization process. At the very least, I'm hoping that thinking through it will make me feel like I'm actually doing something about it. Also, maybe by doing this in a public forum it'll motivate me to make time for some of the most egregious of these blank spots in my gaming history.
I've often talked about how I feel like I'm no longer the target audience for most game makers these days and how I've been more rapidly retreating into older generations of gaming to get the types of games I love most. One of the amazing side effects of the current state of gaming is that when games come out that appeal to me, they are quite often niche games or passion projects that have decades worth of influence to draw upon and implement, or use for inspiration in their new project. Octopath Traveler was immediately on my radar when it was announced due to the beautiful visual style of the game coupled with the fact it was a console quality JRPG. The young Square Soft fan that has been locked deep, deep inside of me and has slowly been losing faith in them really wanted this game to scratch the itch that they used to for me. To say that Square has finally put out a game that is everything I love about the genre and is one of the few games that takes newer gaming concepts that I thought I would never enjoy and makes them fun and appealing to me is a true pleasure in every way.
It's that time of year again here at RF Generation, our annual PAIN YOURSELF WITH SUBMISSIONS CONTEST starts TOMORROW! Officially starting at 12:00 a.m. server time tonight, our contest will run though the entire month of August. As all of you know, member submissions are what keeps this site going and ensures that we have the most up-to-date and best video game database out there. To commemorate our anniversary, we hold this annual contest to see who can "contribute" the most value to the site during the allotted period of time (*see official rules and description of contributions and points below).
So, here's how it works. From August 1st until August 31st, you make as many submissions as humanly possible. Our dedicated database staff will review the absurd amount of submissions, and at the end of it all, one of you gets a super sweet prize package, which includes your choice of $60 worth of gaming goodness. Essentially, you win a shopping spree (not to exceed $60 and items have to be game related) on GameGavel, eBay, or Amazon, and we pick up the tab. Of course, you'll also be the coolest kid in town as you strut around in your new, official RF Generation Ringer T-shirt!
It is official! The RFGeneration crew has started a Twitch channel and will be broadcasting all of your favorite games (...and some of Bil's Destiny 2)! You can find it at http://Twitch.tv/RFGeneration.
Wait, what's that? Did I just hear you ask "How can I be as cool as you, Neo?" Well, you can't...but you can come close...by becoming a member of our Twitch Streaming family! The RFGeneration crew is looking for talented, energetic...or at least sentient streamers, as well as anyone who is willing to come hang out and watch us fail miserably at games! To find us and learn how you can get involved, please continue reading below.
We've all been there. We scour forum posts and YouTube videos for 'hidden gems' to add to our collections like old men searching for rare coins with a metal detector. Whether we actually play them or not is secondary; just owning them is satisfaction enough. One game that invariably appears on every Super Nintendo RPG Hidden Gems list is Robotrek, an obscure game from the creators of such classics as ActRaiser and Illusion of Gaia, but is it deserving of being called a gem, or should it remain hidden?
I'm back at it again with a review of some beat em ups from my favorite anime, Fullmetal Alchemist. I first watched it probably back in middle school with the original series, and didn't finish Brotherhood until college. The action is sweet, I love how alchemy makes sense in the world and is explained by science, and all the characters are great. I really like Greed, if you can't tell from the video.
TooManyGames is a con that my wife and I look forward to every year. Even though my wife works in a retro video game store, there's still something great about going to a whole convention hall filled with games, systems, and nerd related trinkets and art. We've been going to TooManyGames for about 4 years now and it's been awesome to see it grow into the con it is today.
For part three of my Tom Clancy on the Wii series, I'm taking a look at Splinter Cell: Double Agent. This is the fourth installment in the main Splinter Cell franchise and it is the third one I have played, although the other two were the games released after this one. In effect I have been playing the series in backwards order. There were actually two different versions of this game developed by Ubisoft back in 2006. As you may guess, the Wii version is in the less technologically advanced of the two groups, but does that make it a bad game? Not at all. The motion controls almost do though.
