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Episode 343: iPad Hot AirEpisode 343: iPad Hot Air

March 5, 2014| Jonah Falcon| 0 Comment| 11:00 pm

This week sees the return of Paul to the crew, but unfortunately, Jordan’s voice is shot so he can’t make it a team of three. However, Jonah is happy over having a new iPad Air, while Paul laments unemployment. This week’s Gaming Flashback is Team Ninja’s classic Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox.

The news for the week includes:

Microsoft pulls page discussing Titanfall online preloading
Report: Ouya Everywhere puts games on TV, PC without the Ouya
EU takes on “misleading” free-to-play games
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2studio boss, “One must be blind or stupid to give it a 4/10?
Nintendo separates Quality of Life business unit from consoles
Project Milo isn’t coming back

No Question of the Week – listener questions are wide open.

Seven Games That Need to Be RemadeSeven Games That Need to Be Remade

February 7, 2011| Jonah Falcon| 0 Comment| 8:11 pm

With the strong rumor that Halo: Combat Evolved is going to be remade graphically from the ground up, it brings us to the question of why aren’t more games being remade? We’re not talking about reboots like the new emo Devil May Cry, or re-imaginings like the first person shooter XCOM. We’re talking about a true remake like you see endlessly from Square-Enix with its Final Fantasy games on the handhelds – they’re completely faithful to the original, save a new engine, graphics and occasionally an additional mission or two; the upcoming localization of Dragon Quest VI is a great example.

So, we’ve picked out seven games that desperately need a modern remake, sometimes due to their primitive graphics, sometimes due to their incompatibility with the current OS, or the fact you need to do some major tweaking to get them to run (unless GOG.com does it for you, bless their souls.)

These games aren’t old or have already been remade, so you won’t see M.U.L.E., Sid Meier’s Pirates or Seven Cities of Gold – in fact, the oldest of the games is from 1994. You also won’t see games that require little work to be remade, which is why you won’t see Grim Fandango here, either. These games would require serious undertaking. The games also have to remain the same genre and style, so no Elder Scrolls version of Ultima IV, either.

Without further ado, here are five older games that desperately need a remake – in alphabetical order.

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Bikini Karate Babes – Gaming FlashbackBikini Karate Babes – Gaming Flashback

March 15, 2010| schommer| 0 Comment| 3:00 pm

There are some gaming flashbacks I look to do and I’ve got to go back and watch the video. Sometimes, however, they’re games I’ve never played and hit up youtube to see what I can find. This video review (or introduction rather) to Bikini Karate Babe’s really describes all the action. Unfortunately, many folks that read this may not speak German.

That’s okay! The video is worth a thousand words. Things to note, the guys say something to the fact that the video trailer (shown in the beginning) is “EXACTLY” like the game (being completely sarcastic). Anyone want to confess to being a Bikini Karate Babe addict?

Gaming Podcast 114: The Paz CastGaming Podcast 114: The Paz Cast

March 17, 2009| schommer| 0 Comment| 8:28 pm

We’re flashing back to a holographic arcade title, Time Traveler from SEGA and take a reflective walk down memory lane with Apogee and touch on ROTT. We’ve got a light set of community comments and some good game news including:

Microsoft Settles Law Suit
Capcom charging for Resident Evil 5 features
Blizzard Holding Creative Writing Contest
Metal Gear Solid Touch
Sony May have to cut the Price of the PS3
Lionhead Studios Planning more DLC for Fable 2

If you’re looking to enter the World fo Warcraft writing contest, check it out here. Thanks for the write-in’s and, as always, we look forward to hearing more. Question of the week: Would you buy a game that sold you half of other titles in content and made you pay for the rest later in DLC form?

Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?Evolution of RPG’s – Gamers Don’t Want an End?

January 31, 2009| schommer| 0 Comment| 3:51 pm

I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.

link Now even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?

You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.

Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.

Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.

Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.

Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?

Gaming Flashback: River Raid (Atari 2600)Gaming Flashback: River Raid (Atari 2600)

July 17, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 11:04 am

One of the first games I was introduced to on the 2600 was River Raid, back in 1982. I remember it vividly, as I was at my cousin David’s house, who was older than me, and he’d “baby sit” me so the adults could have some adult time hanging out in the dining room. We’d sit in the family room playing 2600, mainly River Raid.

This is an Activision game, and was later ported to Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view over a river and gets points for shooting down enemy planes, helicopters, ships and balloons (for versions after the Atari 2600). By flying over fuel-stations, the plane’s tank can be refilled. The player can shift side to side and change the speed of the plane. Sections of the river are marked by bridges.

The game was highly acclaimed for its ability to stuff tons of map into small amounts of space. The map was huge and it fit on the disk because it’s randomly generated using a common starting seed, basically, imagine some of the Diablo dungeons…they’re randomly generated but the starting seed which starts the random process is also ‘random.’ (probably based on clock time which isn’t too uncommon). Atari, rather than try to make a random level each time used the level random generator to build a procedural based level rather than drawing it and saving it into the cart. GENIUS.

A more highly randomized number generation system was used for enemy AI to make the game less predictable.

Germany consider this game harmful to children, indexing it on their list of games “harmful for children” along with the game Speed Racer. It remained on their list until 2002 (since 1984) when developers petitioned it off the list before the PS2 launch of Activision Anthology (otherwise they’d not be able to put it in the game)

Some of the Germany reasons: Minors are intended to delve into the role of an uncompromising fighter and agent of annihilation (…). It provides children with a paramilitaristic education (…). With older minors, playing leads (…) to physical cramps, anger, aggressiveness, erratic thinking (…) and headaches (wikipedia)

All in all, a great game! To hear all the details on River Raid and our opinions, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 78.

Gaming Flashback: MystGaming Flashback: Myst

July 12, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 3:32 pm

Myst was published by Brøderbund Software, developed by Cyan Worlds and created by two brothers that did the design and directed the game (it was, much like a movie).

The original game was released on the Macintosh (in 1993) and then later ported to Microsoft Windows and Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, 3DO, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.

“Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses an enchanted book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as “Ages”. Clues found in each of these Ages help reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.” (wikipedia)

The game was a success, no doubt, and was considered the best selling PC game of all time until TheSims dethroned it. Besides mind blowing graphics, at the time, Myst helped move the game and PC industry along by selling CDROM’s. The game required a CDROM, which was rare at the time, and I recall them bundling Myst with some CDROMS or hyping it as “you need a CDROM so you can play Myst.” On more than one occasion when a person game to me asking what they should get to show off their new (costly) CDROM I would say “you need to try Myst.”

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them(wikipedia)

Franchise sales: 12-million copies (first Myst game alone in the franchise, 6-million), pretty impressive eh?

You don’t have to be a huge Myst fan to know how it changed the industry, grew the medium of CD-based games and entertained millions. A real gamers thinking game!

To hear our full impression of Myst, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 77.

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Gaming FlashBack: Baldur’s GateGaming FlashBack: Baldur’s Gate

July 2, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 3:23 pm

Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.

It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.

The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.

The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).

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Retro Gaming Moves: Screw Attack [Metroid]Retro Gaming Moves: Screw Attack [Metroid]

June 30, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 7:10 pm

One of the most famous classic gaming moves, Screw Attack, is one of Samus Aran’s best power suit moves in Metroid. It was powerful enough to kill most enemies by contact; one hit for one kill.

What makes this special attack at retro gaming classic is its well balanced game play style. Although Screw Attack is enormously powerful it required Samus to jump at full length to trigger. On more than one occasion gamers would use their Screw Attack to kill an enemy easy to find they don’t have a great platform to stand on and land in the lava, in a worse situation than they started.

Game developers knew they had a hit on their hands, as Screw Attack makes an appearance in many of the future Metroid games after the original NES release. The power up had the ability to trigger at will, if somersaulting of course, yet requires skill and respect to use to perfection.

Screw Attack gives gamers a nice piece of mind, knowing a risky jump won’t end you with a tap from a flying enemy and a bath in the lava. You could freely jump and destroy annoying little enemies whom have no other goal but to get in your way and slowly take away energy with each tiny hit.

On one hand Screw Attacks main purpose is to allow a gamer to jump through areas in levels quickly without an extreme annoyance from starter enemies strategically placed to add challenge. As Samus grows in power the beginning enemies aren’t the true threat and thus are wiped from the level as you go. You become more worried when encountering new, stronger enemies who cause real harm to you and your super suit.

This retro move is placed perfectly in level progression, making you feel a great sense of accomplishment when aquiring it (it’s not just another missile pack) and allows you to progress into deeper caverns without utter fear at every tap. Powerful enough to invoke when needed but weak enough to leave you vulnerable in closed quarter battle.

Screw Attack, a Retro Gaming Move.

Gaming Flashback: The Incredible MachineGaming Flashback: The Incredible Machine

June 22, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 6:19 pm

The Incredible Machine (TiM) is a game designed and developed by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnel (now co-founder of GarageGames and their successful title Marble Blast Ultra on the 360 and co-founder in Dynamix makers of A-10 Tank Killer and The Red Baron). At the time, The Incredible Machine series came out of the shop known as Jeff Tunnel Productions.

Jeff Tunnel Productions published the first Incredible Machine games from 1993 to 1995 while Sierra Entertainment published all the rest of their titles all the way up to 2001. What is The Incredible Machines all about? It’s a game where you must build a series of Rube Goldberg devices in a “needlessly complex fashion” all to perform some simple tasks. That is the entire point to a Rube Goldberg device, which was originally defined as “accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply.”

I think everyone has seen a Rube Goldberg device, their are examples in science museums, and entire Myth Busters Episode about them, they appear in many movies (Goonies used one to open the fence to let in Chunk after he does his dance as did Doc Brown in Back to the Future to cook his breakfast and get his dog food).

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