Measuring Impact From the Grammy’s Recognition of Video Game Soundtracks

The video game industry has historically been a siloed one–kept separate from main stream media and award shows. People didn’t take the medium seriously, and most people definitely didn’t consider it a form of art. Even film adaptations of video games decades ago were…mediocre at best.

Once thought only made for children or nerds, video games have expanded their reach due to breathtaking storylines, beautiful music, and increased accessibility. Some argue that video games are, in fact, an art. However, when it comes to awards and recognition, they’ve still been limited to their own ceremonies like Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards or the Golden Joystick Awards. Only in 2004 did BAFTA–the British Academy of Film and Television Arts–restructure themselves to include the BAFTA Game Awards and recognize Video Games. While 2004 seems like a lifetime ago, it’s still pretty recent when you take a look at how long video games…

View original post 896 more words

Retro Arcadia Weekly Spotlight #58

Retro Arcadia

Time for our regular roundup of quick-fire reviews and impressions of everything under the spotlight at Retro Arcadia this week, old and new and a bit of both…

Something brand new to start with though… Apart from stuff we’re still waiting for (Hollow Knight, I’m looking at you!), there wasn’t much I was more excited about getting my hands on this year than Gunvein, which finally arrived on Steam last week! It’s a vertically scrolling bullet-hell shoot ‘em up, not a million miles from something like DoDonPachi but bringing plenty of its own to the party too. There’s so many modes that you’re going to experience its absolute exhilaration whatever your play level, from entry-level genre tutorials to objective-based missions, a story mode and the relentless arcade mode, where there’s no let up to the destruction – which, by the way, also never ceases to look great! Up there with…

View original post 1,542 more words

Boss Rush Banter: What’s Nintendo’s Biggest Hardware Failure?

Nintendo is known for innovating; for creating hardware and peripherals that explore and expand gaming’s horizons.They’ve helped push handheld gaming, motion controls, and are responsible for reviving home gaming consoles in the North American market. Their big swings and odd devices continue to inspire and bring smiles to gamers, but sometimes they strike out and the risks they take don’t pay off. There’s been a number of their home systems, handhelds and add-ons that didn’t succeed. What’s Nintendo’s biggest hardware failure?

There are a number of pieces of Nintendo hardware that come to mind, and some of the clear top contenders include the Wii U and the Virtual Boy. But there are some other pieces of hardware to consider as at least honorable mentions. There’s also the question of what constitutes a failure, and whether a peripheral or add-on that wasn’t widely adopted is as big of a failure as…

View original post 449 more words

GURPS 3e: Primal Beginnings

Roleplay Rescue’s Blog

The goal in my forthcoming gaming is to offer players as deep an Otherworld-immersion as I can manage while at the same time making life as easy and enjoyable for me as the Referee. If we want players to achieve such an Otherworld-immersion, then we need to remove all of the distractions, helping players to maintain focus upon their character’s perspective. This means a big shift in gaming methodology, away from the regular way of doing things and towards actions which support our goal.

To make life easy for the Referee, we need a stalwart and reliable set of mechanisms which are easy to learn and memorise while being detailed enough to help them adjudicate the decisions player’s make with their characters. We must have consistency of effect because inconsistency will jar the perceptions of the player and push them out of role, out of the Otherworld. Therein lies the…

View original post 731 more words

Netflix Unveils Trailer for Upcoming Multiverse-Saga Sonic Prime

Sonic the Hedgehog has entered the multiverse.

Netflix recently released a trailer for Sonic Prime, an upcoming animated children series set to debut on Dec. 15. WildBrain is the studio behind the series while Man of Action Entertainment, creators of Ben10, is showrunning and executive producing.

The trailer highlights an interaction between Sonic and Dr. Eggman. Sonic’s friends Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, and Rouge the Bat also show up to aide the speedster. The altercation leads to Sonic getting propelled into the multiverse, or Shatterverse in this series.

Sonic arrives in a post-apocalyptic world where Eggman and his council rule. To save the day, Sonic teams up with alternate versions of his friends from other universes.

Netflix initially announced the show in…

View original post 425 more words

Top 10 Examples of Cooking in Gaming

The Game Campaign

Ah, the holiday season, A season filled with family, friends, and most importantly, food. This is a time to celebrate food in all of its forms and even games aren’t afraid to get in the kitchen and cook up something delicious.

These 10 games are the best examples of cooking in gaming today. Whether it’s to help you along in your adventure, making mama proud, or simply cooking up a nice meal for your friend down the road, these games give you the apron and spoon and let you go to town. With that, let’s dig in and see what the first dish in this 10-course meal is.

Subnautica: Below Zero

10. Subnautica: Below Zero

Subnautica rewards players who explore its world to its utmost and learn where certain resources are known to be common – among these being which foods help your different stats.

While there aren’t any fancy…

View original post 1,212 more words

GURPS: Renaming Skills

Roleplay Rescue’s Blog

The key intent for my fantasy world is to create a primal, primordial, prehistoric, and deeply primitive Otherworld. Given that my chosen rules set is GURPS, the biggest realisation I’ve had is that I need to customise my game in ways I’d not considered… like changing the names of skills.

In GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns, it says:

Rules are guidelines . . . Many things are left up to the GM to decide. A game world gets realism from its completeness. The GM adds all the details that make it come alive. With a good GM, even a bad set of rules can be a lot of fun. With a good set, the sky’s the limit. We semi-modestly believe that GURPS is a very good set of rules indeed – but without the GM, the rules are nothing.

GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns, page 486

Underneath that, in an outbox…

View original post 439 more words

More Roleplaying with Middle-Schoolers

Joseph Erwin - Freelance Dungeon Master

It’s always wonderful to see what young players come up with.

As I often find, first characters are usually based on favorite characters from other properties. Typically they have little more than the serial numbers filed off, and then they’re off on adventures. I myself and almost all of my gaming friends have been guilty of this, and I consider it to be one of the Great Unspoken Traditions of tabletop gaming.

His name is… Enzio Bowditore.

This year, running adventures in the same world as last year for the Middle School kids has yielded some fascinating results. Perhaps most fascinating for me was the fact that no less than two different kids made their new characters be directly descended from their previous character, and another player is simply playing their old character again.

I love the fact that several players feel the desire to make a connection with the…

View original post 152 more words

Swords Against Snobbery

Grumpy Wizard

I am addicted to snobbery. I recognize this character trait and fight against it, but it’s hard.

There was a point in my late 20’s when I completely avoided mainstream pop-culture. I didn’t own a TV. I wouldn’t read anything that was on the New York Times best seller list. It was next to impossible to get me into a chain restaurant. If it wasn’t craft, speciality, hand made, bespoke, small press, art house, independent; then I didn’t want anything to do with it.

I was convinced that a person’s preferences about food, music, and art, told me a lot about them as a person.

I was a snob.

When your taste in music, food, literature, art or anything else is a major part of your self-image, it is easy to be judgemental. How can you not be judgy when you see someone abusing themselves with a steady diet of…

View original post 1,079 more words