Yearly Archives: 2018

Music Review: Shadow Spirits, Volume 1 (Chiptune)

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Shadow Spirits Volume 1

It’s no big secret that I love JRPGs. They are one of my favorite form of RPG, and there’s just something about them that draws me in. From the art style to the music that helps build the mood, JRPGs are a fantastic medium to tell a tale of a hero/heroes going forth to save the world from certain doom. I actually had a few albums on my plate to pick from when I decided to do a music review today. One of them was a Legend of Zelda album from Rozen, which to be frank, is amazing. Ballads of Hyrule is remarkable, but I’ve covered Zelda music at least once here. Then I remembered “Shadow Spirits, Volume 1”, which is a chiptune album done by the son of famed musician/producer/director/all-around-genius, John Carpenter. Cody Carpenter created this marvelous chiptune album of original music, inspired by some of my favorite composers/things from the 80s. Cody Carpenter and Mark Day truly created something spectacular here.

“Shadow Spirits, Volume 1” is inspired by composers Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana) and Vince DiCola (Rocky IV/Transformers: The Movie) and I definitely feel it while listening to this album. Shadow Spirits follows the travels of a young samurai as he goes through great battle, despair, and ultimately triumph in this full-length album. It began as a four-track NES EP and grew into something much more. Cody Carpenter used the Commodore SID chip and extra electronic sounds to give it a little extra emotion. They noted that if there’s interest, the four tracks that inspired this creation would be released, and I sincerely hope that happens. This has all of the tropes and moments I expect from a JRPG, and now I’m only disappointed it’s not attached to a real game I can play. Because I can see these moments in my head, and I want it to be real. To anyone who loves electronic music/JRPGs, you owe it to yourself to add this to your collection. It is not tied to any particular game, but there is some serious potential here. I’d love to see an indie company or even an AAA company pick this up and use it for an OST.

Lament (Track 6): Though it is not mentioned above, I feel like he was also inspired by Lufia 2 and The 7th Saga because that’s what Lament feels like more than anything. 7th Saga had a host of towns that had very sad-sounding music, and though very brief, I could feel the overwhelming sadness in this particular piece. Lament felt like the hero had lost someone very dear to them, probably a comrade in arms from the beginning. It could be a childhood friend that stepped into the mists with them to fight or even fight against him. Few things are worth lamenting like being forced to kill a friend if these JRPGs are anything to go by. Slow, somber and deliberate, Lament’s easily one of my favorites. But it leads directly into. . .

Enemy Within (Track 7): I feel like these tracks could swap places in order of appearance and a more dire tale could be told. Place “Enemy Within” before “Lament” and suddenly that dear childhood friend is a traitor, or thinks you are. This is a faster, more pulse-pounding song and has with it a sense of urgency. When dealing with an enemy on the inside, confusion is high, and the hero may not be 100% sure what to do. I feel like this could be a track where the samurai is chasing down his foe, and it cuts directly into a fight. It has a peppy, urban sound and could very well be in a crowded town, blocky 8-bit characters being jostled out of the way so a boss fight could occur in a dark, dimly lit alleyway. There’s simply so much on offer in this album, it’s very hard to pick favorites. I love them all, and I won’t lie about it.

Beyond Reason (Track 12): This is it. All the grinding, all the sweat, tears, blood, sorrow – it all leads up to this dramatic moment. The steady drum tap at the start is a march, towards victory or defeat. Your final encounter is at the end of this path, and the march takes up a good half of the track. There’s a nice, slow transition into a more techno, electronic sound, the drumbeat also now having a pulse attached to it, the boss theme beginning slowly, but still very earnest. It’s not as dramatic and not filled with pomp and circumstance, but not all of these final moments need it. It’s been a long, draining journey, and both the hero and villain are exhausted. This is not the first time they have met, and if history is anything to go by, it won’t be the last. But for now, the hero can relax, and walk down Victory Road.

I cannot possibly pick out favorites for this album, so these are just some of the key tracks that I think tell something special. Every track is important, and I absolutely love this chip-tune RPG soundtrack. Again, I lament that it is not really an OST somewhere, and I sincerely hope some developer out there is reading this and decides to put an offer down for it. This album is available on Bandcamp and iTunes and you sincerely owe it to yourself to go and pick it up right now. Fans of retro RPGs and electronic music will not in any manner be disappointed. As long as I have permission, you’ll probably hear it in my Smite, Paladins, and MTG streams whenever the opportunity arises.

Undercrewed

Undercrewed is a cooperative survival adventure game where you must construct a sturdy spaceship and bravely sail across the galaxy facing deadly challenges at every turn. Mix and match a variety of ship components to build the ultimate space vessel fit for a universe of wonder and destruction. Available for Windows.

Features:

Calling All Crew: Team up with 3 other players either locally or online and let the hi-jinks commence!

Panel by Panel: Craft and customize your spaceship to endure the horrors lying in wait.

Expanded Horizons: Unlock specialized upgrades in either the weapons, medical, or engineering skill trees.

Atari Announces ‘Atari VCS’ Pre-Sale Date on IndieGogo

Atari VCS News

Fans of the Atari rejoice! Atari has announced that on May 30th on Indiegogo, the pre-sale begins for the upcoming Atari VCS. The exclusive wood-front collector’s edition, onyx model and accessories will be available to pre-order. Early-bird Atari VCS packages will be offered, such as the Onyx, starting at 199 USD for a limited time. Other packages will include the Classic Joystick and Modern Controller. Initial VCS shipments are planned for Spring 2019.

The VCS is a completely new Atari connected device, designed in California by Atari. The company has partnered with AMD who provides the Atari VCS custom processor with Radeon Graphics Technology. The Atari VCS platform will offer support for 4K resolution, HDR and 60FPS content, onboard and expandable storage options, dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0, as well as USB 3.0 support. A complete list of Atari VCS product specs will be posted with the pre-sale.

The Atari VCS is Retro-Styled without being Retro-Designed, and will be a fully customizable entertainment experience. It will cover the classics as well, with the included Atari Vault of more than 100 classic titles, from Asteroids, Centipede, Breakout, Missile Command, Gravitar, and Yar’s Revenge. Owners can also expect a full range of popular modern titles, which will be announced at later dates. One can only wonder if Swordquest will return. . .

“We continue moving forward on the Atari VCS project and are excited to see this pre-sale kickoff and to share more updates with our fans as we look toward the first shipments,” notes Michael Arzt, Atari COO of Connected Devices. “We are building outstanding teams and forging alliances that will make this product great and truly worthy of the Atari VCS name. Expert hardware partners are helping make this project possible and we couldn’t be more pleased with their contributions.”

A Robot Named Fight! – Switch Review

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

A Robot Named Fight - Start

Every legend starts at the beginning.

A Robot Named Fight reminds me of “A Tribe Called Quest” – You have to say the whole thing, every time. But I love Metroidvania’s, that’s well documented. So when I saw that A Robot Named Fight is a Metroidvania Roguelite, I was immediately interested. The last one I played, Dead Cells, was absolutely phenomenal, and I really need to go back to playing that. So, I found A Robot Named Fight and oh goodness, did it deliver. There is not much in the way of the story, that’s pretty threadbare. But what it lacks in story, it makes up for in creativity, action, and really does live up to the Metroidvania/Roguelite tags. A lot of games use stuff like that as a buzzword, simply to pop people and get them excited. You play as the titular “Fight”, A robot in a world of robotics. However, this robotic land has been overrun by horrific, organic creatures that spit bile, explode, and are in general, pretty damn annoying.

A Robot Named Fight - hidden items

But you cannot truly fight evil alone.

So every playthrough is a bit different, thanks to procedurally generated content. But it also shows the Seed for each playthrough, which is pretty awesome. All you have to do is enter that Seed/password, and you can try that particular set-up again. The controls feel similar to Super Metroid, in that you use L/R triggers to aim diagonally up and down, plus you can always aim up, and jump to shoot down. To be frank, this game feels like a combination of Super Metroid, Dead Cells, and Super Turrican on the SNES all in one delightful package. The controls are nice and sharp, and Fight has a floaty, Super Metroid jump, where he spins if you move forward while jumping, and stays vertical if you jump then move left or right. I love this jump, but you absolutely have to be careful when using it, because a lot of the platforms you jump to are very small, and that does lead me to one of the next points of frustration.

A Robot Named Fight - Upgrade

The Megabeast is a fitting name for the evil threat.

You start off with a very small HP pool, which is challenging on its own. Thankfully, you get brief invincibility frames when you take damage. The downside is that the invincibility does not last long, By the time the invincibility wears off, the odds of you taking damage again are incredibly high. I have died so many times because I fell onto spikes, tried to jump out of the spikes, only to take damage again. Speaking of damage, there are lots of different types of guns you can find, from rockets to electrically charged shots, and they’re almost always off the beaten path. Early in runs though you’ll be able to tell, because once you’ve seen a type of door you can’t enter, the requisite gun is probably close by. Instead of gaining more rockets for that style of gun, for example, you have a Megaman-style meter (for both health and weapons), and that leads me to how you find things.

A Robot Named Fight - Boss

This is one of several bosses I did battle with.

There are so many secrets hidden in this game, but thankfully, it’s terribly hard to miss some of them. If the ground/wall is slightly cracked, it’s a very good chance you can shoot through it to walk through to move on/find a secret passage, and if it’s just one tiny crack, that’s probably where you might find a damage boost, a new weapon, et cetera. From different guns, a transformation and so much more, exploring this doomed world is well-rewarded. Defeating bosses also rewards cool upgrades, and should you die while the boss is dying (which has happened more than once), that save file will still have that item start appearing. When you die, you start at the beginning, but you have three save files. Every so often, (when you see a new powerup/healing item for the first time, certain powerups) the game will notify you that in future playthroughs, these things will start appearing.

One More Try: 4.5/5

A Robot Named Fight - Secret

Mmm. Hidden Pathways.

This is a challenging title, though. Very challenging, but it’s not due to poor controls like the games from the era it’s based on, but a genuine challenge. The bosses have patterns to be aware of, but just because the big beast is dead, it does not mean it’s the end all the time. No matter how many times I’ve died and started over in A Robot Named Fight, I’ve found myself coming back for “One more try”.  Every sound effect is horrific and adds a real sense of horror and worry to the game. Every death of an enemy looks gross, with blood, puss, just really vile looking stuff. The graphics hold a lot of nods to games like Doom, Contra, Metroid/Super Metroid. But the actual graphics hover somewhere between the Turbo-Grafix 16 and the Super Nintendo. It has the violence and gross nature of Turbo-Grafix games, with the well-designed areas and depth of SNES games. My gripes/nitpicks are just that, minor nitpicks. Once you’ve died a few times and really learned how the game is played, how to find secrets, it becomes something truly magnificent. It doesn’t punish you, but you do have to learn and grow to succeed. If you love Metroidvanias, Dead Cells, and challenging gameplay, you definitely owe it to yourself to play this on both the Switch or on PC.

GTFO

GTFO is a hardcore four-player co-op first-person shooter featuring deeply atmospheric apocalyptic themes layered on top of blood-pumping action and brain tickling puzzles. Work with your fellows and survive the dark night. Available for Windows.

Features:

Going Gaming: Save your cash, ditch the movies and spend countless hours with the Expedition Director system exploring new and exciting adventures.

Bravery Is a Mask: Discover your comrades’ dark pasts as well as their motivations to continue against all odds.

Live Together, Die Alone: Commit yourself to inter-team communications or fall to discord.

DomiNations 3 Year Anniversary Crowns Raffle

We’ve partnered with Nexon and Big Huge Games to celebrate the third anniversary of DomiNations with a Crowns raffle!

DomiNations is a mobile strategy game challenging players to lead their own civilization from the Stone Age to the Space Age through advancement, exploration, and conquest. It is the debut title from Big Huge Games, founded in 2013 by a group of longtime industry collaborators. DomiNations is available as a free download for iPhone and iPad on the App Store and for Android devices on Google Play.


Our special raffle is giving away three Crown Prizes to lucky winners:

  • Grand Prize: Mountain of Crowns (+14,000 Crowns)
  • Runner Up: Plethora of Crowns (+6,500 Crowns)
  • Third Place: Starter Pack (+2,500 Crowns)

For Your Chance To Win:

  • Visit the official entry thread. If you don’t have one, you will need to sign up for a forum account to post.
  • Post a reply to the thread with your Player ID.
  • Winners will be announced on Thursday, May 4. Prizes will be sent directly to your account, so make sure you give us the correct player ID!