Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category
Jam’s Mystery Unboxing and March Game Club Promo
Our main man Jamalais has been busy at work this week with some videos for the GH101 community. The first is an unboxing video of the mystery package he received from the Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) speerunning marathon and yetee.com:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu0srWByWXo
The second is a promo video for the two great games we are featuring for the March Game Club, Alien Trilogy and Die Hard Trilogy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eGrJfroNU8
Check them out!
Special Announcement
We have a launched a new campaign that will get the community more involved, push more content, and give away more games. Please give our 1 minute audio a quick listen or click the link under the “Help Keep Gaming History 101 Going” section on the right sidebar. Thanks again from Fred and Jam.
Length Does Matter?
Video games are much longer than they used to be. It makes sense, the technology was originally geared toward coin-op experiences that wanted you to get as addicted as possible to pay as much as possible to keep playing. Arguably that still holds true today with “free to play” or “freemuim” gaming, mostly on mobile devices, but for most home console or PC games there has been a growth in how long you’re playing the game. I think the consensus is that with a longer game you are getting more for your money, which certainly seems to be the sentiment of everyone more concerned with The Order 1886‘s length rather than content. On the other hand I get much more enjoyment out of a five minute game of Donkey Kong or even a fifteen minute run in Rogue Legacy than I can speak for with all 22 hours I’ve spent with the Dragon Age trilogy. Personal taste aside, that last example speaks to the fact that this new dollar:hour ratio is shy of calculating actual value out of a game and thus suggests that longer is not always better.
Opinion: Re-Releases, No One Understands Them
This weekend I sat down and spent some time with Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered and while the responses were mixed, it dawned on me that no one – publishers, developers, gamers – has a clue as to what they want out of a re-release. It sounds funny and foolish at first, but the concept of the re-release has, in recent years, become quite the quandary. As a fan of the past and games of those time periods, I can’t say that I even know what I want and this shines light on the daunting task of trying to make sound business decisions around it. Furthermore, the vocal minority don’t often account for the way sales work out, and often times, are the exact opposite of what actual sales data states. Couple all of this with the stubbornness, and I do mean that term specifically, of gamers who would rather a publisher waste time to bring an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 game to the Xbox One or Playstation 4 simply because they didn’t hang on to their old system is – in an exaggerated overstatement – a sin. To be clear I’m not even talking about games like The Last of Us Remastered or Halo: The Master Chief Collection, because at least those games were redone and improved upon visually, but rather direct ports of simple games like the arcade port of Double Dragon on XBLA coming to Xbox One. It’s a waste of time and it won’t generate more than a few thousand sales, stop wasting everyone’s time asking for it.
A New Obsession: Retro Gaming Achievements
Please Note: All screenshots in this post are taken from retroachievements.org and were not created nor are they the property of Gaming History 101. I only used them to demonstrate the wonderful project and site that has been created. Please visit Retro Achievements to take advantage of the software and see for yourself the world described in this blog post. – Fred
retroachievements.org logo
I think the argument over the value of achievements/trophies/accomplishments/arbitrary rewards is all but required to occur at least once a week in video game enthusiast circles. It’s one of the least interesting and most divided discussions happening. At its core, however, it all boils down to one factor: do you or don’t you like achievements. Just because you like them doesn’t mean you’re a so-called “achievement whore” and I’m not saying that those who ignore them completely are getting any less out of their games than others, but it’s always a hotbed topic. I like achievements. I would say I like achievements more than most, especially when it comes to retro games. That’s like the one thing that few developers take the time to integrate into many ports – not remastered editions, but ports – most likely because the games weren’t built for those kind of triggers so retrofitting them must be a pain. It’s for this reason that when I stumbled upon the site retroachievements.org and found a series of emulators that have achievements built into them that I instantly fell in love. Retro gaming achievements just got “real”.
A tribute to 100!
Authors notes
I wrote a article for GH101 to celebrate the 100th episode last year. However, I decided not to post it because I felt it didn’t really fit in with the site. After receiving a very touching e mail from a fan of GH101 I’ve changed my mind. It’s important to stand by your passions and I love writing, talking rubbish and being part of GH101 and this article is very much a tribute to that. Of course this is written in the past tense so take the content for what it is. Thank you.
Original article
On the 22nd of July Gaming History 101 is going to hit the milestone of 100 episodes which is a fantastic achievement. I thought I would share some of my memories listening to the podcast as well as becoming a co–presenter (co-host).
The route to G101
A couple of years ago I had taking up a job in Cambridge (a well known town in England) and commuted everyday from the outskirts of London. I was probably travelling around four hours a day either by foot, bike or train. Of course I was very much into gaming on the handheld, this was the perfect opportunity to play RPGs like Final Fantasy 7 on the PSP. But I often returned to my personal favourites, the Resident Evil games to see if I could complete them in a single day. I also read books, caught up on work on my Netbook, but I needed something else to fill this incredibly long void.
I was a big fan of YouTube and one evening I was watching a random video from YouTuber “PeteDorr,” who announced he was doing a podcast with some other members of the community called “AllGenGamers” and that it could be heard on itunes. I downloaded it to my ipod and its safe to say I became pretty hooked on gaming podcasts from then on. Since I traveled so far I listened to several podcasts including IGN UK and US, Giant Bomb, and Joystiq. I would also throw in non gaming podcasts as well like Hamish and Andy and Radio 4 film podcast.
Podcast: Big Boss Man Part 2
Listener @Fortengard joins us to continue our earlier discussion on the art of the boss battle. With tons of community news, e-mails (thanks guys), and news articles, we don’t get there until about halfway through but then we get down to the concept of the doppelganger, the “dark” version, and attacking oneself. We then tackle roundtable discussion about our significant boss battles.
Talking Ports: Half Life on the PS2
I’ve always wanted to dedicate an article to Half Life on the Playstation 2 (PS2). However, Half Life is one of those games I genuinely get a bit worried about when reviewing, since so much as mentioning anything negative about this series will cause the entire Valve fan base to storm on you with torches and pitchforks. No where is safe, you are screwed. But since so few people have even played Half Life on the PS2 hopefully, its safe to come out of my Half Life hermit cave and talk about it.
Now here is where I make my first shocking statement: Half Life on PS2 is the first time I ever played Half Life. One redeeming factor maybe that it did lead me to playing the game on the PC later when I was able to. Anyway, I was in day one for Half Life on console. I’d been anticipating the game since the hyped up Dreamcast port which never official surfaced outside of the homebrew scene (despite being advertised in leaflets that game with games at the time). It seems like a lot of the assets used to make the game on the Dreamcast surfaced on the PS2. Whether your a massive fan of the Dreamcast or not, its hard not to argue this game was much more suited to the PS2 due its its dual analogue sticks. This was the time where First Person Shooters (FPS) were finally getting easier to control on consoles, with thanks to Halo, gamers where just no longer stomaching the single analogue nub system famous on the N64 and Dreamcast.
Feel the Need, The Need to Speed-Run
This past week a charity event has taking place in the America called “Awesome Games Done Quick” (AGDQ). For those of you who have not heard of this event, it is where gamers from all over the world gather together to speedrun various games (retro and modern). It’s twenty four hours of gaming goodness over seven days all in the name of charity. The event is to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Today’s article is a tribute to the internet phenomenon that is speedruning.
I first became interested in speedruns after getting into a debate with a friend about what the fastest time Resident Evil on PSone could be completed. Eventually we headed to YouTube to find a video of a speedrunner by the title of Carcinogen, running through the game in just over an hour. There was something quite mind blowing of how precise he played through the game. This then lead me to finding more videos and consequently discover ADGQ which almost feels like an esports event, as people speedrun a game live while crowds of people roar with cheer as they pull of a difficult glitch. I then soon learned there was a entire website of people speedrunning games twenty four hours a day (speedrunslive.com). Not only are runners somewhere in the world speedrunning games right now, there are also runners racing each other. I’ve have never really been much of a Sunday football watching kinda guy, but I guess I know the feeling now since watching speedrunners race each other can be quite exciting.
Extra Credit: 2014 Game Clubs – A Year in Review
Jam goes solo on this short show to round up all the Game Clubs we did over 2014
Gaming History 101 