In Episode 041, MetalFRO and Addicted take a close look at a game from a venerable arcade developer, as it moved away from the arcade setting, and into people's living rooms. How does this third entry in the R-Type series fare against its arcade forbears, and does it successfully bring the formula home?
Growing up as a child in the 80's, I recall a few stories from friends and classmates about the video game goodies they got to open at their family Christmas celebrations. It was always fun to hear what they got, in part because I knew I would probably get a chance to play some of those games soon enough, when I could go over to their house. Sometimes it was high praise for the game or console that mom & dad (or grandparents) bought them, and occasionally it was complaints that they got a game they thought was "lame" or that they had already thoroughly played via rentals or borrowing from friends. Typically, I was more than a little jealous, since I never got gaming stuff for Christmas. My first game system was the Game Boy at age 12, and I didn't get my own console until I was 14, and I had to buy it (and the TV it hooked to) myself. So I had to live vicariously through others, reveling in their new acquisitions as best I could from afar.
So a few months ago I was contacted by Red Bull Gaming to participate in a fun contest they had planned. Myself and two other builders were asked to build the most intimidating fight stick they could think of for Red Bull's Tekken legend Anakin. I never made a fight stick before but was happy to accept the challenge. Red Bull put out their own video with all three of our stick builds and a brief interview on their channel. This is my behind the scenes on how I came up with the idea and built the fight stick.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you the November 2021 edition of RF Generation's Site News! In this issue, we announce our next Community Playthrough title, reveal next month's shoot 'em up club game, 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!
Daylight Savings Time ended a few weeks ago and that means it's time to break out my VR rig. I love playing PSVR in the fall and winter. It's one bright side (pun intended) of the cooler weather and earlier dark hours. I feel like I haven't been following PSVR releases in a long time (did I even play this thing last year?), but I have a lot of games on the shelf that I haven't touched, and this month Playstation Plus is featuring three PSVR titles for download. Here's what I've been playing.
My dad was not a gamer, video or otherwise. He played me at chess exactly twice, handily winning both times and had no interest in playing again as he said he had nothing else to prove. When it came to the fairly new invention of video games, it wasn't as if computers and technology were foreign to him; he was one of the punch-card programmers who set up terminals for the Army's ARPANET, laying the backbone for what became the internet of today. His purchase of a Commodore 64 during my youth was completely transformative for me and shaped my future in many ways, including my introduction into the burgeoning world of video games.
In this month's episode of the PlayCast, Rich (singlebanana) and Shawn (GrayGhost81) discuss a game on the original XBox that many consider a "hidden gem." Released as a means to increase XBox sales in Japan, Phantom Dust is a 3rd person arena battler with "card" mechanics. Join us as we discuss the game's complex gameplay mechanics and its unique graphical and musical styles. In this month's Concertcast, the guys reveal their Top 6 tracks that celebrate life. Is Phantom Dust the gem that others claim it to be, or is it better left in the dust? Tune in and find out!
As always, we are happy to hear your thoughts on the games we play on our discussion page (linked below). We will respond to your comments and are always happy to discuss the games in 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!
Posted on Nov 14th 2021 at 01:00:00 PM by (Pam) Posted under video, review, PS1, JRPG
This is a review of one of my favourite PS1 games. Star Ocean The Second Story is an amazing JRPG with a real-time action combat system, great interactions between characters and the most amazing crafting and skill system.
Another video game filled year, another RFGeneration Secret Santa! Come and join the merriest retroiest fanboyiest Secret Santa on the internet! Rules and signup information can be found below.
The deadline to sign up is Friday November 19th so ACT NOW!
RF Generation is a collector's site, first and foremost. But throughout the years, most of us have dabbled with emulation, in one form or another. Whether it's through official means, like the Wii or Wii U Virtual Console, or buying officially released collections of older games, such as the venerable Namco Museum line, or the Capcom Classics Collection and similar compilations, or via other means that are, shall we say, not quite on the up and up. Whatever the case is, we've probably all encountered emulation, and utilized it to some extent. Even older games built into newer games, such as NES titles found in the original Animal Crossing on Game Cube, or the arcade games present in each of the Shenmue and Yakuza series games would qualify.
Being a huge survival horror fan for decades, the Silent Hill series has always stood out to me for its amazing atmosphere, which the music plays a big part in establishing. While there are the typical moody and foreboding tracks which you would expect from the genre, Akira Yamaoka does a great job of including some really great and emotional tracks that stick with you long after the game ends. In fact, I remember Silent Hill music being some of the first video game music I ever listened to outside of the game itself. This cover is a bit different from my usual sound. I hope you guys enjoy it!
One of the major trends overtaking the gaming world in the late 1990s was the rise of the survival horror genre. Capcom's Resident Evil and Konami's Silent Hill are the most well known from this day, but many Japanese developers threw their hat in the ring. Deep Fear is Sega's big entry to the burgeoning survival horror genre. It would be developed for Sega's Saturn and released in 1998 in Japan. It would also be the final Saturn game released in Europe, and would be released just over two weeks before the Japanese release. A North American release was prototyped but sadly never released. However, this has been largely made irrelevant as years later this North American build would be leaked onto the internet.
The game takes place in an undersea US Naval base called the 'Big Table'. A strange space pod crashes down into the Pacific Ocean. The US Navy tracks it down using a submarine called the SEA FOX and brings the pod back to the Big Table. John Mayor is then introduced to players, who will be controlling him, and the game starts off with John having a prank played him. John and his partner, Mookie, are then assigned to assist workers in the Navy Area where the SEA FOX had returned but had just detached itself. John has a mission to rescue any of the personnel, and especially head researcher Dr. Gena Weisburg. This first job starts to show the strange mutated monstrous creatures that will inhabit the Big Table over the course of the rest of John's journey deep beneath the sea.
I've been wanting to get around to doing some full metal covers from Final Fantasy VII since I started my channel, and I finally felt like the time was right to start making them. FF7 has probably my favorite soundtrack from any game ever, so I really wanted to have some experience under my belt before tackling anything from it. Birth of a God plays during the Bizarro Sephiroth fight at the end of the game, and it's a really awesome track that I've always enjoyed. Expect to see more FF7 covers over the next few months!
Books are like video games to me in that no matter how many I own, physically or digitally, I am always looking for more to add to my collections. In the past few months I've been on a sci-fi streak and have made an effort to try out some new authors rather than leaning on my more prolific favorites. This leads me to do internet searches of "sci fi hidden gems" and "underrated sci fi authors" and if I spent as much time reading books as I did hunting more down, I'd get a lot more reading done.
I can't remember exactly where I saw it, but as an animal lover, Greg Van Eekhout's 2018 children's novel Voyage of the Dogs caught my eye and was an almost instant purchase. VotD tells the story of Lopside and his compatriots who are dog astronauts known as Barkonauts. The Barkonauts are assigned to assist the human crew on a long term mission to set up habitat on a distant planet. Unfortunately, something went wrong during the hibernation phase of the voyage and the human crew have disappeared. Lopside and the Barkonauts must figure out what happened and survive long enough to get help.
