Monthly Archives: February 2018

A New N64 Game is Coming to Kickstarter

40 Winks Box

Piko Interactive is a video game company based in San Antonio, Texas. They are proud to announce that the first N64 cartridge is being developed by them, since the Nintendo 64’s demise! It’s called “40 Winks” and it’s an action platformer where you control the brother and sister team of Ruff and Tumble. The ultimate goal is to collect 40 Winks scattered around the world to stop the evil Niterkap. Nitekap wishes to turn the winks into hood-winks who are responsible for giving children nightmares. He must be stopped! PIko Interactive is seeking 20,000 base funding for the game on Kickstarter to produce cartridges that will be compatible with American and European Nintendo 64 consoles. The cartridges will also come packed with a cardboard box and color instruction manual, just like you remember from your youth. A link to their Kickstarter can be found here.

Game Features:

Transform into different characters! Attack as a stealth ninja, fight as ferocious monster, or fly into action as a super hero!
Tons of mini-games as well! Race dragons, strap on a rocket, and more!
6 themed levels – a scary castle, shipwreck city, outer space, deep down underwater, back to the prehistoric world of T-Rex and giant wasps and into the nightmare world of ghosts and monsters.
Co-op 2 player mode exclusive only to the N64 version.

Removing My Rose-Colored Glasses: Legend of Dragoon (PSX)

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Legend of Dragoon - Archangel

What… what is this? “Archangel” you say? Well, okay …

Legend of Dragoon was an early Playstation RPG, and as such, it has a very special place in many hearts. Legend of Dragoon, Breath of Fire 3, Final Fantasy VII, Legend of Mana, Legend of Legaia. These were the hallmarks of the early Sony/Playstation Era. Some of these have aged much better than others. Legend of Legaia’s Combo System (Tactical Arts System) was engaging and clever, where players had to figure out the best combos to use for a variety of situations. Breath of Fire 3 had the Master system, where characters could adjust their stats and abilities by mentoring under more powerful Masters in the world. Final Fantasy VII’s Materia System was a first of its kind, though inspired surely from Final Fantasy VI’s Esper System. Everything about Legend of Mana was clever, cute, and it was another Mana game! Though the World system was kind of vexing. What did Legend of Dragoon bring to the table?

Legend of Dragoon Review - Winglies

HOW COULD YOU?! THINK OF THE WINGLIES!! …What were the Winglies again?

It brought a sixty dollar Super Sentai game to us, that’s what it did. I love Sentai, I do! I love my wacky costumed heroes doing ridiculous things, posing and transforming. But that’s what Legend of Dragoon essentially was. Instead of five members of the team, you had seven. The main character even wears red like your standard Sentai leader! The hometown is even named “Neet”.  A “Neet” is a reference to a person, “Not in Education, Employment, or Training”, first used in the UK, but it spread to places like Japan. He’s disgustingly brave, inherits his father’s “Dragoon Form”, and is a standard anime hero, for all intents and purposes. And he’s boring. Everything about him and the plot is formulaic and substandard. His home village is destroyed by “The Black Monster”, that only appears every 108 years. And as it turns out, that “Black Monster” isn’t even the main villain! They’re supposed to help him! They are in the damn party. Yes, Rose was one of the original Dragoons in the Dragoon Campaign and destroyed his home. That’s so trite.

Legend of Dragoon FMV

This was gorgeous for the 90s, say what you will.

Legend of Dragoon (or Legend of the Dragoon) is a four-disc game, which sounds really impressive. But is only four discs because of the size of the FMVs that are included in the gameplay. This is the same reason Final Fantasy VII is Three Discs, and VIII being Four Discs. I mean, you could do Disc 3 of FFVII in one sitting if you really wanted. So it’s less that it’s a sprawling, long, epic journey and more that it simply has very pretty (and they were, I won’t lie) cutscenes. It’s a fairly pretty game, better than Final Fantasy VII, but not as good as VIII or IX. This is not a bad game though. But this was Sony’s first serious attempt at an epic JRPG, in my opinion. It wasn’t as powerful as Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy and Enix’s Dragon Quest (or even 7th Saga, if I’m being 100% honest).

Legend of Dragoon Review - Battle

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

However, Legend of Dragoon did have a terrific combat system! I feel like it’s the precursor to several “Ring Systems” used in later games like Lost Odyssey on the Xbox 360. Though it was turn-based, which wasn’t new or revolutionary, the “Additions” system was. You had two buttons on the screen when you pressed Attack. You have to time the press of the button with the shrinking circle just right, and doing so will give you more damage. As the game goes on, you’ll gain more of these Additions, creating long chains of incredible damage. However, the longer the chain, the greater the chance of an enemy working a counter in (but you can do another timed button press to evade their counter and continue dealing damage). Then there are the Dragoon Forms, where you transform to do new attacks and better damage. It felt like a combo between Super Mario RPG’s timed attack system and the Breath of Fire “Dragon Form” system, where Ryu/Hero turns into awesome dragons to deal more damage.

A Fine Start:

PLAYSTATION--Legend of Dragoon The_Nov26 1_59_37

What on Earth indeed…

Legend of (the) Dragoon is not a bad game by any means. But many people romanticize its existence, fondly remembering it as a wonderful, sprawling, epic RPG worthy or note and narration. Unfortunately, it does not quite hold up to those memories. It was a great start for Sony, but their strength was not in RPGs. They were much better at doing action/platformer titles, but they tried. And to their credit, it was certainly not a terrible game. The combat system was delightful and engaging, but the story, the characters were bland, uninteresting, and honestly a little disappointing. It’s formulaic and not hard to guess what’s going to happen next if you have even a little familiarity with anime/rpgs of the era. It managed to be the top-selling PSOne classic on PSN for three months which frankly, shocks me. That is the power of nostalgia though, friends. Not all of these games we played way back when were quite as wonderful as we remember.

Iron Sky

Iron Sky is a kingdom management sim RTS set in the vast expanse of space. Construct your base, manage resources, and command units to conquer the universe one galaxy at a time. Available in the browser.

Features:

Heading to the Mine: Build resources gathering machines to bolster your economy.

Willing Warriors: Recruit and gather fighters for the cause.

Always Improving: Upgrade everything including your buildings, units, and assisting adviser.

Paladins Strike

Paladins Strike is a 5v5 multiplayer online battle arena utilizing 15 of the gun toting champions from the popular source material. Shoot enemies, cast powerful abilities, and call upon the power of a juggernaut to defeat your enemies in intensive battles designed for easy of play on mobile devices. Available for IOS and Android.

Features:

Pushing the Goaline: Cooperate with your mates and push the payload to victory.

Make it Yours: Customize your hero with a variety of costume changing skins.

Hitting the Mark: Experience the fresh reimagining of a top tier MOBA.

MU Ignition

MU Ignition is a F2P hack’n’slash fantasy MMORPG taking players on a new adventure across the MU continent. Lead your fearless warrior to unfathomable riches and renown by completing a variety of quests and felling great beasts! Available in browser.

Features:

Role Play: Take your pick from the dignified sword wielding dark knight, lone wolf elf archer, or spell slinging Dark Mage renegade.

Beast Hunter: Blaze a trail through the world engaging in fast and rewarding real-time combat.

I’ll Do it My Way: Customize and level up your character to your heart’s delight.

Conqueror’s Blade

Conqueror’s Blade is a sandbox warfare simulator where you will shoulder the heavy responsibility of leading a nation to wealth and comfort or unimaginable disaster based on your ability to command troops and manage a kingdom. Fight for a place among the ruling elite by conquering the world! Available for Windows.

Features:

Boots on the Ground: Utilize a variety of units like crescent bladed warriors, pike-men, bow wielders, and trusty sword n’ shield knights.

Plains for the Capture: Travel across 20 varied regions chalk full of diverse landscapes and unique history.

Trained Fighters: Upgrade your army with boostable skills and powerful new professions.

Spellsworn Early Access Key Giveaway

We’ve partnered with Frogsong Studios to offer early access to Spellsworn on Steam!

Spellsworn is a PvP arena brawler, featuring fast-paced spellcasting matches set on a continuously shrinking arena, encroached by destructive, arcane-powered surroundings. Players battle it out in teams or free-for-all over intense five-round matches for up to eight players. Between each round the magic arsenal can be customized by buying, selling or upgrading spells to switch up the play style and mess with the minds of rival wizards. The magic mayhem reaches another level once the hazardous environment begins wreaking havoc on the playable field, causing damage over time to each player pushed off of the arena. With an ever-changing environment that poses as much of a threat as the enemy, only the skilled and quick-witted will be victorious!


Spellsworn will go Free-to-Play when it leaves early access – but with this Steam key, you can get in the game now for free!

To Redeem your Key:

  • Launch the Steam client software and log into your Steam account.
  • Click the Games Menu.
  • Choose Activate a Product on Steam…
  • Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.

Note: Unfortunately ad blockers may interfere with our site. If you have any issues claiming a key, please disable them and try again.

 

3D Replay: Interview with Minkonet

Recently, PUBG introduced new anti-cheating measures through the use of 3D replays and death cams, technology provided by the company Minkonet. We talked with Ken Park, VP of Service/Marketing, to learn more about Minkonet and its services.

Minkonet Logo

OnRPG: Most gamers are unfamiliar with the name Minkonet. Can you describe briefly what the company’s goals and services are?

Ken: Our mission is to change the way we watch and play video games. We develop 3D replay solutions for Unreal, Unity and in the near future other engines in the Gaming ecosystem. We hope that our all-encompassing robust 360-degree data capture technology can provide high definition gaming video content experiences and enhanced social media interaction to unleash new content capabilities previously unseen in gaming.

OnRPG: Minkonet has leaders from other video game companies. What experience do they, and Minkoket, bring to gaming technology?

Ken: Minkonet’s CEO was the first mobile-game publisher in Korea and our President & COO is credited for being a pioneer in Korea’s Mobile, Internet and Video Gaming markets. He has founded several startups including a mobile game company that was sold to Electronic Arts (EA). They knew what was lacking in the gaming industry back then and that’s we are doing right now.

OnRPG: Minkonet’s recently come into the spotlight through its partnership with PUBG Corp. to provide a new 3D Replay and Death Cam. What inspired the creation of this technology, and how does it benefit PUBG players?

Ken: It was 2014. We were thinking of some kind of service that gamers can share their gameplay moment easily. First, video format was too big in size for mobile environment at that time and we came up with data capturing and replay idea for universal game engines.

We think 3D Replay could be easy but powerful content creation tool for every gamer. Beyond the in-game environment, players are leveraging the intuitive replay camera system to create and share video highlights and high-quality cinematic shorts across social platforms including Twitch and YouTube.

OnRPG: The new replay cam is also now being used as an anti-cheat measure, allowing players to report activity from the 3D Death Cam – a first of its kind in competitive gaming. How hard was it to implement a report feature?

Ken: Implementing a report feature is not the hard part. The real hard part was implementing 3D Replay for PUBG, a battle royale genre with massive data points spread out over large areas. We experienced a lot of challenges to guarantee reproducibility of replay and also not to harm the game’s performance.

OnRPG: What other features does the 3D replay offer?

Ken: We have a plan on meshing A.I. with 3D Replay to make anti-cheating solutions powered by anti-cheating artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithms.

There are some scenes from a sci-fi movie or comic that show detective or policeman reassemble the crime scene in form of hologram based on the data they gathered from the actual crime scene and investigate the scene over and over with all possible way like searching abnormal points, changing perspective, and zooming in & out to find out the truth.

The idea is pretty similar to this. The ability for us to capture 3D data (unlike other standard video capture technologies in the market), allows us to expand into analytical capabilities such as big data and artificial intelligence, using algorithms based on game events and player behaviors. We can filter out suspicious players by searching out cheating behavior patterns stored in replay file using the algorithm automatically. We expect this can provide reasonable evidence banning cheaters and reduce complain of banned cheaters. Not like other anti-cheating solutions, this solution does not have to run with the game in real-time risking game performance drop or unexpected error. And this can reduce game developer’s pressure to investigate all the cheating reports pouring out every day.

Other than Anti-cheating, 3D data capture enables us to manipulate cameras freely during playback. Editing of a replay file basically involves two things: to cut scenes around actions and to set up camera paths (dolly track) to capture the scene in best angles.

And also, we plan on configuring the cinematic camera paths and cutting scenes automatically through AI to generate 1~2 minutes of intense and attractive highlight of gameplay. 3D data capture enables us to detect major event moments like combat engagement, car chase, stun move that are good enough to be cinematized by filtering out event pattern from the replay. “Every gamer is a creator.” Under this slogan, we hope this will enhance social media interaction to unleash new content capabilities previously unseen in gaming and to help make their games go viral for game developers.

Player behavior and statistical data captured can be used to group players with similar players through matchmaking and configure opponent difficulty levels. Prediction of tactics can also be used to make games more challenging and engaging to the player.

OnRPG: How easy or difficult is it for developers to implement in their games?

Ken: Unlike other internal replay engines, our 3D replay works with game engines such as Unreal and Unity and various genres of games. We are continuously improving our system to minimize integration work. In the near future, our goal is to make it as easy as a plug-in feature.

OnRPG: Will the 3D replay technology be available directly to gamers sometime in the future?

Ken: Definitely, we hope so.

OnRPG: What other technology is Minkonet looking to develop in the near future?

Ken: Minkonet’s mission is to redefine the way people watch and play video games. We want to help game developers strengthen user engagement through our replay technology. And help users unleash new content from their gameplay. We are also working on building tools to help eSports become a better viewing experience for the massive number of fans growing around the world.