Archive for August 2018
GHX Ep 31: Random Strange at the Moose Lodge
Fred and Trees are back! There’s a lot to catch up on, but they do manage to remain mostly on games including God of War (2018), No Man’s Sky, Devil May Cry (2001), Trees gets a Switch, Dead Cells, and the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. All that along with discussions of the Analogue Super NT, gamers as game designers, and some recent news.
Also Fred is doing Extra Life this year! He’ll be set up with prizes and dates soon, but if you’re game feel free to donate early here: https://www.extra-life.org/participant/316569 Donating early does not disqualify you from any prizes.
Co-Operative Episode 3: Gears of War Ultimate Edition
Fred and Gren get together to discuss the co-op experience of Gears of War, which quickly becomes a discussion about the changes of the 360 original and the extra content of this edition from a 2 player standpoint.
The Ending of Large ROM Sites Should Garner A Different Response
With the recent fall of some major rom sites, and others pulling their own hosted files offline as a response, I’ve seen a somewhat trending reaction from the community that concerns me. My peers are avidly going out and downloading entire collections of games and files from these sites to have on hand should we see the fall of the easy to access rom site. Not only do I feel this will never happen, but this response is flawed and wrong. The response you should be having is to start looking into ways to back up your own games. It’s relatively cheap, free if you don’t need to backup carts, and it will allow you to never worry about losing another game again whether it’s damaged, stolen, or subject to the rare chip/disc rot. Oh yeah, and it’s also not illegal.
A Little Background
Just under a month ago, web site Torrent Freak reported that Nintendo sued loveroms.com and loveRETRO.co over having open access to copyrighted material. For those not familiar, Torrent Freak refers to itself as “a publication dedicated to bringing the latest news about copyright, privacy, and everything related to filesharing.” The web sites in question were owned by an individual, Jacob Mathias, who ran his own Arizona-based LLC that focused on these file sharing sites. Those who work in rom sites specifically tend to not carry certain games and files specifically for fear that something like this would happen. While I’d never been on the site myself, the fact that these sites had direct download links to a myriad of roms (files that represent a cartridge based video game) that included Nintendo’s prime catalog is a big mistake. The one or two sites I used to frequent would pull down specific roms that were re-released such as Virtual Console games and more recently the “Classic Edition” line of Nintendo’s library. This other site also would pull down any game that the publisher had requested, so if you went to most Capcom titles there would be a note that the game was removed due to the publisher’s request. Finally that other site would not host BIOS files, which are proprietary software in certain consoles that are required to get certain emulators working, which it was revealed Mathias’ sites also hosted. Put all of these factors together and these sites had massive bulls-eyes on them for just this kind of response. Nintendo even makes it a point in the suit to call it out, “The LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites are among the most open and notorious online hubs for pirated video games.”
We Happy Few Impressions – Should You Get It?
We Happy Few releases today after more than 3 years in development and 2 years on early access. Now PC, PS4, and Xbox One players can play through a fresh new campaign that builds upon the original mechanics. Assuming you haven’t played We Happy Few or only recall initial early access impressions like this one I previously did, or if you’ve even watched an early video like another I did, this video wraps up what you can expect in the first 8 hours in a mere 8 1/2 minutes.
