Sunday, June 25, 2017

News:: Retroid episode 3 talks Puzzle Puzzle Puzzle games

Hi everyone,

This week's Retroid looks back at vintage puzzle games. We discuss the origins of the genre and some of our favorite titles, all the way up to the modern era. From Tetris to Bejeweled, Dr. Mario to Puzzle Quest, there's something here for everybody. You can listen below or visit Soundcloud to download the episode for later listening.

I think this is the best episode so far, even though Topher's still in the bucket. There's a lot of music and a few cutaways in this week's show, so let me know if you like this or if it's a little too much. The opening sketch came from here

The first 50 minutes are devoted to talking about puzzle games, specifically the type that tend to task you with moving stuff around on a single screen. The NES Tetris commercial that played at 7:39 can be viewed here

The interlude at 30:00 was the Troika song programmed into the Tengen version of Tetris. 

The interlude at 50:25 is Dr. Mario 'Funky Pills' by Jake "Virt" Kaufman. You can find it on OCRemix or listen to it on YouTube.

I wanted to make sure Jonathan had a chance to weigh in on the recently announced remake of Metroid 2, so we broke format a little. From 50:55 to 1:10:30 we talked about Nintendo's Return of Samus that was announced at E3, and the interlude at 1:10:30 is the music that plays on the surface of SR388 in AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake). You can listen to the whole track here, and I highly recommend it.

From 1:11:50 to 1:34:30 we answered listener questions, and one of the first we got to asked about our favorite music tracks from puzzle games. There are clips inserted from 1:21:00 to 1:25:00, but if you want to listen to the entire tracks you can find Alex's here, Topher's here, and mine here.

I mentioned the different international Marios that were inserted into the Game Boy version of Qix, and if you'd like to see the collection you can check them out here. This version will probably never get a rerelease, but it's still cool to see a callback in Super Mario Odyssey

The final interlude at 1:34:30 is a track from Puyo Puyo Tetris called Unsavvy Tetra Force! As always, the intro song comes from Sunsoft's Journey to Silius and our outro music is NES Metroid Ending - arrange version by nicoMS0122 on YouTube.

If you missed either of the earlier episodes, you can catch up by listening to them here and here. This week's topic was suggested by a listener, and we're always interested in hearing from the audience. Let us know what you like about the show and what you'd like to hear us discuss on future episodes! You can give your feedback in the comments below, or you can always reach us @RetroidPodcast on Twitter.

Retroid episode 3 talks Puzzle Puzzle Puzzle games screenshot



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News:: Weekend Deals: 30 games for $15 and top Summer Sale picks

If you were told exactly what 30 games you would get in the GMG Loot Box, would it be as alluring? Nay, the mystery box draws one towards it like a deer in the headlights.

This weekend GMG has Loot Boxes back in stock and with a 20% off coupon. The best value from the group of mystery loot boxes are 30 random games for the price of $15.99 (after using coupon code DEALZON20 for the discount) - and to add an extra carrot on top, you'll also receive a "mystery bonus" that ranges from as small as $2 in store credit, to recently released Triple-As such as Tekken 7, or even $500 in store credit.

Before you scoff at these boxes, a quick scan of GMG's top 10 bestseller list reveals 6 out of 10 bestsellers are loot boxes - which confirms that yet again, us gamers like to roll the dice when it comes to our backlog addition.

If you've been sleeping under a rock this weekend, the most important event this month is the advent of the Steam Summer sale. It all began on Thursday last week and will run through July 5th at 10am Pacific. After wading through hundreds of deals we've concluded this sale is remarkably better than 2016's Summer Sale and includes new lows on titles like Prey, Dark Souls III, Tom Clancy's The Division, Bayonetta, and even a giant Sonic Games Collection.

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News:: Have you jumped ship from Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite?

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite had a cloud of uncertainty going into E3 and one of the factors was rumor of its complete character roster at launch. One of the best words used to describe it was flaccid.

The roster wasn't outright bad, but it wasn't at all an exciting list of characters, almost entirely composed of returning characters from Marvel vs. Capcom 3 who all likely carried the same moves and models as well. But I think I can safely say that when E3 ended, I don't think I've ever seen a game's public image and goodwill die as desperately as MvCI. At least Battleborn was visually distinct.

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News:: Mintervision

I want to take some time out of my day to talk to you about our lord and savior Jeff Minter.

When VR headsets were first announced, I was smitten. Since I've been a little kid farting around the house pretending in I was a videogame instead of playing "house" (the house, not the doctor) I dreamed of what virtual reality would be like. And those dreams were largely based on CG cartoons off of YTV and movies like The Lawnmower Man. I never really thought about the simulation aspect of VR, the proverbial holodeck from Star Trek that would let me live out a fantasy simulation, probably involving beautiful women in goat masks and barrels of ketchup. And while I'm sure Jeff Minter of Llamasoft can probably relate to the goat masks at the very least, I don't think that is what he had in mind long ago when virtual reality was a fantasy, back in the eighties and nineties when he was making such games as Attack of the Mutant Camels, Llamatron, and Sheep in Space, a Defender clone where you play as a sheep and have to periodically land in a pasture to eat fucking grass, which is just about the most mind-bogglingly cutest thing I have ever seen in a video game. Jeff Minter has been making games since he was a kid, most of them with a curious fascination with cute farm animals. And they are if nothing else unique. But they are also goddamn great a lot of the time.

Jeff Minter probably isn't known too well in North America. His games have always been somewhat abstract and obscure, starting with the Sinclair ZX80, an amazingly cheap Z80 microcomputer from the mind of Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of cheap home computers and this fucked up looking three wheeled electric Mr. Bean-ass lookin' car which was obviously a big hit since everyone is still driving them everywhere all the time.



His biggest claim to fame was always Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar. He worked closely at the time with Atari, who in recent times being the absolute trash bin of a placeholder company that they are nowadays, threatened to sue him over similarities between one of his newer games TxK which resembles Tempest quite a bit, but which is still one hundred percent his original concept and creation. (the cunts) Tempest 2000 was the Jaguar's biggest hit; despite having interesting hardware, the unfortunate Jaguar sort of came out at the wrong time and was generally mishandled as a platform. It also had a controller shaped like a chewed up arse. After Tempest it seems like Jeff went back to playing in the shadows, perfectly happy marching to the beat of his own drum without involving himself in too many endeavours involving big, faceless gaped maw conglomerates. 



The later results of this action were the bizarre Space Giraffe for Xbox 360 arcade and much later on Steam, another game that at first feels like Tempest but is very different in its mechanics, and which is also something of a psychadelic visualizer. And Space Invaders Extreme for the DS and PSP, a game you probably didn't play, and what a fucking shame if not; it was a brilliant recreation of Space Invaders gameplay at a much faster pace which felt almost like a music game similar to Rez. Apart from video games, Jeff Minter is known for his work in visualizers, dating back to the days of the Commodore 64. if you have ever played music on a computer or video game system and enjoyed the visualizer functionality, the chances are that Jeff Minter's influence had something to do with it. His most beloved seems to be the one on the Atari Jaguar CD, a flop of a toilet shaped waste disposal unit that never worked properly and that no one ever fucking used since the console sold like complete crap and everyone was probably sick to fuck of dumb FMV games by the time it was released. Nevertheless, many people took inspiration from it, and he later developed the Xbox 360's music visualizer as well.

That brings me to the recent PSVR release, Polybius.

If you feel like you've heard of Polybius before, you are probably also aware of that Pokemon cartridge that gave kids siezures, slenderman, or a dozen other "creepypasta" hoaxes that were spit out of the perpetual meme-grinder. Polybius is a bit of a myth in the gaming community, referring back to the golden age of the arcade when real men had mullets and beards and too much free time, you could get a piece of ass if you were good at Burger Time, and some kids apparently fell into comas and siezures while playing a mysterious arcade cabinet that popped up in middle America, apparently used to monitor brainwaves or something for the FBI. The machine dissappeared as quickly as it emerged according to the legend some guy made up half way through a fistful of cheetos, and has never been seen or heard of since. You can read about the details here, and it's pretty fun stuff, if not a complete waste of time and likely without a kernel of actual truth behind it past the fact that a game might have been in development with the same name but was shelved, maybe because arcades were starting to tank around the same point. But who the fuck knows, really.

Jeff Minter's Polybius, then, is no more a replication than it is a love letter to the idea of what Polybius was meant to represent; a game embodying the mood of the 80's, the escapism of staring into a screen full of blaring sound and colorful abstraction made to do little more than cynically extract quarters from children and adults alike, but which many people really embraced due to the inherently nihilistic nature of the certain failure that went along with playing them. Old arcade games are not fun because they are hard. They are fun, AND hard //insert shitty dick joke here later, DON'T FORGET!!!// and it is the abstraction itself which I find Jeff really understands makes them appealing despite living in a world where any chump-ass can pull up Unity and instantly make something resembling a rough approximation of the real world albeit chock full of obnoxiously placed recycled assets. Polybius will not extract any data from your mind for use by government officials (that I know of), but its constant barrage of "subliminal" messages and seizure inducing light shows might just put you in "the zone" that the Men in Black were apparently looking to simulate in the stories of what the original Polybius was meant to do.



Games like Polybius represent what I always felt the digital world would be like: full of basic polygonal shapes, psychadelic colors, the same sorts of 70's science fiction schlock that people now seem to be embarrassed was ever our conception. Even newer movies like Tron feel more like they are poking fun at this aesthetic at the same time they are celebrating it, but I think there is something to be said about abstraction and how interesting it can be in a digital playground. If I want real life, I can go live it anytime. If I want to go to another planet and shoot giant space camels, or fly through a tunnel at 1000 miles per hour while shooting at errant spheres and floating neon cows, I'll play a video game. 

Polybius firmly cements itself in this aesthetic and makes no apologies that it is an arcade shooter from 2017 if the "golden age" of games never ended. We never got even as far as Super Mario Bros. and we certainly never made it to the age of the puke-tinted military shooter. Whatever computers and game systems and machines we continued to build used slight variations of VIC chips and 6502 micro-processors, and all we were ever able to artistically muster up was a vague representation of some familiar shape or object. Slightly better with polygons, of course, but not far removed from the bizarre creativity of the Galaga's and Pac Man's of the day. 

VR is still pretty divisive. It's encouraging to see "VR Cades" popping up everywhere, but I still feel like they are a work in progress. We don't really know what the fuck we're doing with the technology yet. I have the shame of admitting I don't yet have a headset to play Polybius on, and that the best way to play it has been sitting super close to an eye searing 50 inch television, a poor mans emulation. But Polybius is exactly the sort of game I envisioned would be popular whenever VR headsets finally became a realistic prospect. A game that feels like the world a computer itself might dream up if it was forced to create the idea of three dimensional space. Exactly the sort of game I have been clamoring to buy a headset for since the things were conceived, car simulations and jerk-off games be damned (I'm dehydrated enough as it is on a regular basis, I don't need that in my life.) The gameplay is as straightforward as it is; you fly through various tubes and shoot at the things in front of you. Occasionally you will fly through gates which will increase your speed and help you get through the tubes faster at the risk of dying more easily. And every few levels or so a new mechanic will be introduced to mix up the action, but there isn't much to it other than that. And despite being so basic, I feel like I have put more time and thought into it than any other game I've bought in the past few months simply because it feels so genuine compared to other games embracing a "retro" aesthetic. 



Look, I'm no hater of the "8 bit" aesthetic being shoved down our throats like so much delicious, wonderful tripe. Games like Shovel Knight are the wet dream of a guy my age who grew up playing Mega Man. But some of them feel derivative, or like they are missing the point. I know for a fact game development is one of the most difficult challenges artistically, in the programming world, and otherwise, so I'd never accuse a developer of being cynical enough to spend literally hundreds of hours creating something with the sneering intent to extract money out of enthusiasts of retro gaming. Except maybe for the fuckhead behind the Coleco Chameleon, a wretched piece of vaporware with a fake tech demo that fooled literally no one, and was generally a bad idea to begin with. (a console system in 2017 with no sort of upgradeability, using a proprietary method of software distribution...what the actual fuck? Sign me up.) But the point remains, looking like an old game for the sake of it, even when that aesthetic does nothing to prop up the mechanics of your game in any real way and is just there for the fuck of it? Well, it's getting a bit long in the tooth. And it's nice to see that we are slowly creeping away from that automatic tendancy.



Jeff Minter's games don't express that vapid intention in the slightest. Despite the last three of his major titles, TxK, Space Giraffe, and even Polybius to a degree feeling like a very similar experience the Tempest's of the past, they also feel inventive and fresh in their presentation, or at the very least push the envelope of this "Mintervision" aesthetic I am having such trouble extrapolating. All from a man who lives on a farm and plays with Llama's all day, and who has always stuck to his guns when it came to creating product unique to his vision (except maybe Defender 2000, but there were reasons that turned out to be so-so, and none of them seem to be the fault of Minter himself.) The fact that Polybius is a PSVR title, and that it feels so much like an old arcade game seems perfectly fitting for what VR really is; an unsure foray into a new world where everything is so experimental and new, where there is uncertainty about the hardware being developed for, and where we are just really discovering what this platform will evolve into. Maybe in five years, VR won't be a thing at all, fizzling out just as fast as the big wooden quarter guzzlers that came long before it.



Polybius is not a perfect game, it's not for everyone, and I feel like only a small handful of weirdos are really going to appreciate what it is and what it represents. But it's another solid mark on Jeff Minter's cow and sheep scribbled white board. I find the man himself as interesting as the games he produces, almost stubbornly devoted to his own style. His journey from kid genius programmer creating his own company to Atari lovechild (and then arch nemesis apparently: again, cunts.) and now, in the present day, still making exactly the sorts of quirky stuff he is known for but doing it on a brand new, uncertain platform is endearing and inspiring. And I hope more people discover and love Polybius. It is firmly nestled in the VR section of the Sony Store, so it's likely to be overlooked, though it is reported to coming to Steam later this year. But I feel like games like this and the folks like Jeff who make them should be bought. I was going to say "celebrated", but actually fucking buying them is ultimately the most important thing, though I think Jeff might be too humble to really admit that. Also, I love his Twitter feed. It's mostly pictures and videos of his llamas.

I like llamas.



Mintervision screenshot

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News:: Little Witch Academia game releasing November 30 in Japan, limited edition revealed

Namco has released a second teaser trailer for Little Witch Academia: The Magic of Time and the Seven Wonders, the upcoming PlayStation 4 game based on the hit anime, Little Witch Academia. Along with showing off more of the game in action, Namco revealed more about the game, including a limited edition, and a pre-order bonus. They also confirmed a release date of November 30 for Japan, and that Studio Trigger, the makers of the original anime, will be providing new footage exclusively for the game.

Little Witch Academia game releasing November 30 in Japan, limited edition revealed screenshot

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News:: GameCenter CX - Episode 139 - Dynamite Headdy Part 2



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News:: Unsung Masterpieces - Metal Arms: Glitch in the System

One can be sure that discussions of the Konami-Kojima fiasco will go on for several years. If it doesn't, I'll be back. Depending on how Death Stranding turns out, this bit of gaming history may also become a genuine legend. I say this because, come next year, I anticipate that many will be trying to use the power of hindsight to answer the questions that we can't begin to answer at this time.

But for now, one thing that is for sure is that Konami is happily(?) sitting on the rights for many beloved series. This means that we will have to suffer news of these nefarious necromancers making the corpses of once beloved series' dance in large HD screens sitting atop pachinko machines.

Unsung Masterpieces - Metal Arms: Glitch in the System screenshot

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News:: What Disney worlds should we visit in Kingdom Hearts III?

Kingdom Hearts III feels like it’s been in development since before the release of Steamboat Willie. After Kingdom Hearts II’s release all the way back on the PS2, we’ve seen nothing but spin-offs and side stories since, spanning a couple of different devices, before getting an endless parade of re-releases and compilations. The most recent of which brought every game in the series except for Dream Drop Distance to the PlayStation 4 in one package.

While I’m sure there is another compilation planned that will bring 3D into the mix, there is nothing else on the horizon except III. Finger crossed it stays that way. Right before E3, we got a new trailer that showed off a bit more of the Olympus themed level as well as a more mature design for Sora. Next month at D23 we’re supposed to get our first look at a new world. So far it’s been revealed Tangled and Big Hero 6 will be making appearances as playable worlds in Kingdom Hearts III, but with nearly a century of Disney history to pull from, it’s anyone’s guess which other movies or TV shows will make the cut.

With that, I wanted to know which new worlds our Destructoid writers would want to see in KHIII.

What Disney worlds should we visit in Kingdom Hearts III? screenshot

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News:: 5 Great Discord Bots for Overwatch

Discord has quickly become the go-to text- and voice-chat application for gamers everywhere, and it’s the service’s excellent Bot integration that has made it so indispensable. Around the web, developers are creating excellent Bots for every game community out there to get the most out of their Discord servers, and Overwatch is no exception. Whether it’s pulling stats, delivering the latest news, or pushing event reminders, the Bots have it covered. Here are the 5 Overwatch Bots every Discord server needs.


OverBot

Originally designed for Crit Cola’s official Discord server by Daniel Marquard, OverBot is an exceptional tool for fetching and organizing Overwatch player stats. OverBot uses a simple set of commands that make fetching player data a breeze. It can even pull stats from PlayStation and Xbox users without requiring any time-consuming or complicated authentications.

There are a number of Overwatch Discord Bots out there that fetch player stats, but few do it as simply and as comprehensively as OverBot. You can learn more about OverBot and links to add it to your Discord server here.


Bonfire

To say that there’s a lot of features to this versatile Bot would be a gross understatement. With over 120 commandsâ€Å —â€Å including a series of dedicated Overwatch options, an in-chat game of Hangman or Blackjack, music playback, and moreâ€Å —â€Å Bonfire is one of the most advanced Discord Bots available.

But if that wasn’t enough, users can just type this simple command for random cat pictures whenever they want… which is always. What more could you want?

See more of what Bonfire has to offer here.


Guilded Bot

Guilded Bot is the only Discord Bot on this list that takes teams into account, and it’s the only one anybody will ever need. Guilded Bot synchronizes activity between Guilded communities and their Discord servers, providing a seamless experience for teams to communicate, schedule, and recruit from anywhere. Overwatch players can be notified on their channels when they receive new team member applications, or alerts for upcoming scheduled matches and competitions, without ever leaving their server. If Discord users don’t already have a Guilded team, Guilded Bot will even generate one for them.

You can find out more about the Guilded discord bots here or here.


OverTells

The OverTells Bot, created by the team at OverTells.com, has a simple goal: deliver breaking Overwatch news hot out of the oven. Whether it’s scoops on new features, Competitive Event schedules, or the hottest goss behind the scenes, OverTells has it covered. It’s not a complicated Botâ€Å —â€Å it only has three commandsâ€Å —â€Å but it doesn’t need to be. It sets out to keep players inform, and it does.

You can invite the OverTells Bot to your server from their page on Botlist.


Airhorn Solutions

Developed internally by the Discord team, it should come as no surprise that this Bot is among the finest produced. Its plethora of uses amongst the top Overwatch players are so evident and so well-known that they aren’t even worth mentioning here. But it is in the Airhorn Solutions’ transcendence beyond mere utilityâ€Å —â€Å both socially and emotionallyâ€Å —â€Å that it has earned its place on the channels of over 450 thousand users (and counting!).

For more information on Airhorn Solutions, and how you can be a part of the revolution, check it out here.

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News:: Did You Know Gaming's look at Ape Escape is bananas

There's a special place in my heart for Ape Escape. It's one of the first video games I remember buying. I played it for hours. Its combination of cool gadgets, goofy apes, and groundbreaking dual analog control scheme blew my middle school mind.

I didn't keep up with the franchise after Ape Escape, outside of watching a few Ape Escape 2 speedruns, but the latest video from Did You Know Gaming works as a crash course in the series' history. There's information about the origins of Ape Escape's dual analog controls, unused assets, and the series' hidden pop culture references.

Did You Know Gaming's look at Ape Escape is bananas screenshot

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News:: This augmented reality Super Mario game is going to kill its maker

The Microsoft Hololens might be the so-called leader in mixed reality, but at $3000 per unit and zero must-have apps we've almost forgotten that it exists altogether. Recently, a genius developer (who Starbucks baristas know by fifty different names) took matters into his own hands and finally made something I'd love to play. This Super Mario Brothers fan-made demo is one of the most impressive mixed-reality game mashups I've ever seen. Go watch it before Nintendo's sleepless legal team fires up their hater engines. Even if you own a Hololens please brace yourself for blue balls: Mr. Singh said he's not going to release this to the public but may share some of his Unity 3D code with other developers.

The video below, recorded in New York's Central Park, shows what running through World 1-1 might really be like in real life. It's absolutely daunting. The squares are so high above your head, you can't see shit when they produce an item, and jumping those chasms looks rough! I don't know if I have the knees for that. The funniest thing is watching unsuspecting people stroll through the tall pipes while our hero almost runs face-first into them. They must be so confused. Actually, they probably think he's playing Pokemon Go and are totally used to this. Could you imagine Pokemon Go on this thing? I wouldn't mind going out like that.

Compare it to actual World 1-1:

 

This teaches us three things: (1) The future of augmented reality games will probably be played with a certain level of transparency (2) We're going to need smarter chaperone systems or somebody's eventually going to go out of a window or into a car and (3) adoption for this type of stuff may never happen at the home due to the vast physical requirements (even if the headsets become somewhat affordable), and maybe that's where future arcades are headed.

A wise man once pointed out that forty years ago all we had was pong and, if any advancement happens, videogames simultaneously played by millions of people will be almost indistinguishable from reality (you need to watch this). What red-blooded sapien wouldn't want to go chill with Khaleesi for five bucks all afternoon? Sign me up.

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News:: Are Capcom's expectations for Monster Hunter: World realistic?

Another E3 has come and gone, and now we play the waiting game. In the meantime, let's discuss one of the big reveals from the show: Monster Hunter: World.

Capcom's landmark hunting-gathering series has long been a phenomenon in its native land, but that success hasn't been replicated elsewhere. Capcom believes that a big chunk of the blame rests on the Western handheld market, which is nowhere near as robust as Japan's. With World, bound for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows, the company hopes to change that.

I personally am not a huge fan of the franchise. I gave it a fair shot with Tri on Wii, yet it never "clicked" even after dozens of hours of solo and party play. That said, I do understand how Monster Hunter could amass such a die-hard following, in much the same way as I understand that its complex controls and time-investment demands have turned away many others. To find success, World will need to be more inviting to newcomers while retaining the series' familiar essence.

But even if World checks all the right boxes, I doubt that it'll grow the Western audience in a significant way. And what of Japan, where Monster Hunter reached its lofty heights through the strength of local multiplayer on handhelds? Is Capcom willing to risk guaranteed sales in one market to chase another that may not exist?

Are Capcom's expectations for Monster Hunter: World realistic? screenshot

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