PS2J 339 News – Karts Over Boards

March 19, 2021
Tagged as: 2021, 2d, 4:3, abzu, action, adaptive trigger, Adventure, advertising, AI, Alan, aloy, analog sticks, ancient, app tracking transparency, Apple, arid, art book, astro bot, backup, beetle, Bethesda, Boba Fett, bow, Braid, bullet hell, buy-out, bytedance, cable, caid, caravan of courage, cellular, charm, China, china advertising id, Clone Wars, co-op, Comics, complete edition, computer, controller, couch party edition, crew, database, DC, developer, dexter’s lab, digital, Disney Plus, DLC, Dreamcast, enter the gungeon, Epic Games, ewoks, exception, exploration, Facebook, fallout 76, financial times, First Person, flower, Free Games, friends, frozen wilds, Gamestop, genndy tartakovsky, Government, gradius, grip, hacker, haptic feedback, hbo max, holiday special, horizon zero dawn, idfa, illusion, imax, information, Instagram, Internet, invasive, iOS, Josh, Journey, Justice League, knuckle, LAN, Legend Of Zelda, logic, machine, moss, mouse, Multiplayer, music, myst, Netflix, oculus touch, official, open-world, optica, paper beast, PC, pcloud, Phone, photo, pilot, platform, platformer, play at home, Playstation, pounding, Privacy, procedural, ps+, PS2, PS4, ps5, PSVR, puzzle, quill, rail, redwall, rescue mission, rez, rez infinite, rhythm, rogers, roguelike, role-playing, RPG, Samurai Jack, secret, sharing, Shaw, shoot ’em up, Shooter, side scrolling, sneaky, snyder cut, social, Sony, Space, spatial, spear, Star Wars, subnautica, survival, swimsanity, synesthesia, table, techno, the battle for endor, the fall, the new responders, the story of the faithful wookie, the witness, third person, thumper, tiktok, tracking, trippy, Twitch, two of them, underwater, verify, versus, warning, YouTube, zack snyder

Free Games

Twitch
- Swimsanity – Couch Party Edition
  - 2020
  - Multiplayer 2D underwater shoot-em-up with co-op and versus game modes, and both online and local play. It’s like Gradius in the ocean with your friends
- Optica
  - 2018
  - Puzzle game of logic and illusion with a basic geometric design, that has you putting your spatial thinking to the test with everything from curious shapes to optical illusions
Epic Games
- The Fall
  - 2014
  - Action-adventure side-scrolling platform game where you play Arid, an artificial intelligence installed in an advanced combat space suit, as you explore a decaying industrial facility in search of medical attention for the suit’s injured pilot
Sony Play at Home 2021
- Free for everyone who owns a PS4 or PS5, not just PS+ subscribers
- March 25
  - ABZU
    - 2016
    - From the art director of Journey and Flower, ABZÛ is a wordless underwater adventure that evokes the dream of diving, taking you on a journey through the ruins of an ancient civilization.
  - Enter the Gungeon
    - 2016
    - Roguelike bullet hell with procedurally generated levels, following four adventurers with different special abilities as they descend into the Gungeon to find a gun to kill their past
  - Rez Infinite
    - 2016
    - An expanded release of the musical rail shooter originally released on the Dreamcast and PS2, it has you following a hacker’s journey into a malfunctioning AI system in a way that tries to create a sense of synesthesia
  - Subnautica
    - 2018
    - Open world survival action-adventure game that drops you on an alien planet covered with water where you have to build, survive, and uncover the secrets buried under the waves
  - The Witness
    - 2016
    - First person puzzle exploration game, a la Myst, developed by the creator of Braid
  - PSVR
    - Astro Bot Rescue Mission
      - 2018
      - Third person platformer with a ton of charm that has you exploring 5 different worlds to rescue your lost crew
    - Moss
      - 2018
      - Adventure game that feels like a mix between Redwall and The Legend of Zelda, that transports you to a fantasy land to help a young mouse named Quill defeat a fire-breathing snake and save her uncle
    - Thumper
      - 2016
      - Rhythm game that has you guiding a beetle-like creature along a set of rails and through different obstacles, all to trippy visuals and the beat of pounding techno
    - Paper Beast
      - 2020
      - First person adventure game where you explore a large ecosystem made up of various digital life forms originating from lost internet code
- April 19
  - Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition
    - 2017
    - Open world action RPG that follows Aloy, a young hunter in a world overrun by machines, who sets out with her bow and spear to uncover her past
    - The Complete Edition comes with the full game, the Frozen Wilds expansion, a digital art book, a PS4 dynamic theme, and bonus weapons, outfits, and resources

A state-backed group in China wants to get around App Tracking Transparency and track app users with a controversial new “China Advertising ID”, or CAID

There’s currently a feature on iPhones that’s a little sneaky where developers can store text information in your keychain and access it across any of your devices
- The really sneaky piece that’s just ripe for abuse comes in where these objects are not only accessible from any of the developer’s apps (not just the one that stored it), but they’re also not cleaned up when you delete an app
  - So for example if you installed Instagram and deleted it, then installed Facebook, Facebook would be able to identify that you’re the same person
  - And the worst part about this is it applies to things like advertising or authentication code, so if you have an app that uses Google for ads or Facebook for logins then it can read and write that same information shared by all apps by those specific developers
Well in response to Apple giving users control over who can track them by official means, it sounds like Chinese companies may be working with the China Advertising Association to use this information to build a database of users for tracking purposes
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, released an 11-page guide to app developers that was obtained by the Financial Times, suggesting that advertisers “can use the CAID as a substitute if the user’s IDFA is unavailable”
Apple has denied that they would be granting any exceptions to the new tracking rules, saying that apps found to disregard a user’s choice would be rejected, and one person familiar with the situation said that Apple would be able to detect which apps use the CAID and potentially block them.
- Unfortunately if this takes off it could be Apple vs the Chinese government, and if the majority of apps in China start using the CAID it could lead to some serious repercussions
Yang Congan, the chief executive of a Beijing-based data privacy company, suggested that CAID had been designed to get around Apple’s rules because it might not “uniquely” identify users, but that’s sophistry at best and an outright lie at worst
I think the best way forward to be to rethink how exactly apps from the same developer can access data on your account, and give users more control over that piece as well. The feature may have been designed with the intention of streamlining the user experience and letting developers recover sessions or logins, but using it to smuggle data across apps should be a clear violation of developer agreements

Sony’s unveiled the planned controller for their next generation of PSVR, and it looks pretty slick

The controller looks like an evolution of the latest Oculus Touch, but they’ve put the tracking ring a little further back around your hand and wrist
- It looks like it’ll be pretty well balanced, though after having third-party knuckle grips for my Oculus I can definitely see wanting them here, too
They’ll also have adaptive triggers on both sides, haptic feedback, finger detection, and analog sticks on both controllers
- With modern VR those analog sticks wouldn’t be worth mentioning, but coming from the previous PSVR they’re a big improvement

This Week In Gaming History

March 13 – 2012 – Yakuza: Dead Souls – PlayStation 3 (United States)

The district of Kamurocho has survived gang violence, terrorist bombings, and open mafia war, but the latest threat may be the one that finally destroys the district for good: a zombie apocalypse.
- As the city burns four men search for answers: Shun Akiyama, the enigmatic moneylender from Yakuza 4; Goro Majima, Leader of the Tojo clan’s Majima family; Ryuji Gouda, exiled former-chairman of the Omi Alliance and antagonist of Yakuza 2; and the Dragon of Dojima, Kazuma Kiryu.
Yakuza: Dead Souls is the sequel to Yakuza 4, taking place one year afterwards but with a decidedly more fantastic premise.
- The game also has a radically new combat engine, as the living dead can easily shrug off kicks and punches.
- Each character can equip up to four weapons at a time, from pistols with unlimited ammunition to wide-spread shotguns, powerful anti-armor rifles, and incendiary grenades.
- While inside the quarantined areas of Kamurocho the player can be swarmed by zombies at any time, with more than twenty attacking at once.
- In addition to zombies they will also face mutants, such as the quick and agile Monkeyboy or the zombie-summoning Cry Baby, who are stronger and will require different tactics.
- Even more dangerous Prototypes will appear as bosses during the storyline.
Like previous Yakuza games sidestories are often available between story missions.
- The quarantine has disrupted many people’s lives, and they need help getting back into the infected areas to save someone or finish some business.
- A new feature to Dead Souls are Perfect Partners, as some of these people in need will permanently join the protagonists, entering the quarantine when called and leveling up and gaining new abilities alongside them.
- Most of the minigames of previous Yakuza games, such as dining, hostess bars, batting cages, crane machines, and more are all present.
- The coliseum does not return, but in its place is the Subterreania, a randomly generated dungeon filled with enemies that rewards the player the deeper they go.

March 14 – 1986 – Night Fire – DOS

As artillery games are wont to do, Night Fire sticks each player into the stuffy interior of a tank, placed somewhere on a randomly generated terrain, and pits the participants (2 to 8 of them) against one another in a merry free-for-all of ballistic abandon.
- The objective? stay alive, and prevent your opponents from doing the same by feeding them carefully-measured portions of flaming death.
Each player in turn can either move or shoot – moving is useful for improving tactical positions (and avoiding an untimely demise when enemy shells start getting too close).
- For shooting, the barrel angle and shell velocity can be modified as needed.
- Presiding over the battle is the full moon, which provides more than ambiance: it helpfully displays on its disc two gauges, indicating air friction and the wind’s speed and direction, which also have to be taken into account.
Josh played this, if not a very faithful recreation of it.

March 15 – 1997 – Snowboard Kids – Nintendo 64 (North America)

A racing game where you control one of five cutesy snowboarders competing against each other.
- Being a snowboarding game, each track is a downhill slalom with a ski lift at the bottom which takes you back to the start for however many laps a track has.
The tracks are varied, the first few taking place on snowy mountainsides, while the latter taking you to wackier locales such as grassy countryside, a desert and a theme park.
- The money collected on the course or won at the end of the race can be spent to buy better boards, which differ in stats, or to collect items/weapons while racing.
- There are also stunts that can be performed while racing which earn money as well, and certain parts of each course encourage the player to do so.
Other modes include stunt mode, shoot mode and speed mode, all focusing on a particular part of the gameplay from the main game, and a multiplayer mode where up to 4 players can race each other.
- There are also unlockables for dedicated players.

March 16 – 2010 – Metro 2033 – Windows, Xbox 360

Plot:
- In the year 2013 almost all of humanity was wiped out as a result of a devastating war, and Earth’s surface became a nuclear wasteland.
  - The few survivors in Moscow retreated to the city’s subway tunnels.
  - But even underground, human society continued to develop in predictable ways.
  - Factions were formed, and stations and entire lines were occupied by ideologically opposed groups of people.
  - War continued on a much smaller scale, adding to the difficulty of living under nearly impossible conditions, fearing the dark subway tunnels which harbored terrifying creatures.
- Artyom was born a few days before the apocalypse, but raised in the underground.
  - Up until now he had never left the relative safety of the Exhibition, the northernmost station in the Moscow metro, where he lived together with his stepfather.
  - However, everything changes when a soldier called Hunter arrives at the station, warning its inhabitants about a group of mysterious creatures known as the Dark Ones.
  - When Artyom realizes that Hunter will never return from his mission, he decides to travel through the tunnels to the central Polis station and get help there.
Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter with survival horror elements, based on the Russian book of the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
- Most of the game takes place underground, but several times Artyom will have to venture outside, into the perpetual nuclear winter.
- Game progression is fairly linear, though areas may be explored more thoroughly for items and ammunition.
- Setpieces include a few on-rails sequences, missions that involve defending a location from an onslaught of monsters, and others.
- A few stages can be completed in a stealthy fashion.
Mutants and hostile humans are the enemies of the game; Artyom can use a variety of weapons to deal with them, including AK-47, sniper rifle, automatic shotgun, and others.
- The player can only carry a sidearm and two primary weapons at the same time.
- Dynamite sticks and knives complete the set.
- All weapons come in different variations with scopes, silencer and other upgrades attached.
- While the upgrades cannot be bought individually, already upgraded weapons can be purchased at shops in the stations in exchange for the old weapon and powerful military-grade ammunition, the only currency in the game.
- If Artyom is hit, he slowly regenerates his health automatically; however, medikits are available to instantly heal him and increase the regeneration rate for a few seconds.
When traveling on the surface or through poisoned areas, Artyom needs to equip his gas mask in order to survive.
- The filter of the gas mask wears down as it is being used (indicated by Artyom’s special watch and his heavier breathing) and can even be damaged in melee fights, straining the filter even more.
- Other tools available to Artyom are a pair of night vision goggles, a flashlight, a light-meter, a lighter, his journal with a compass, and a charging device.
- The latter is required to manually recharge the flashlight and the night vision goggles once their energy gets low.
- The light-meter, on the other hand, helps Artyom to determine if he is hidden in the shadows, helping him to avoid some dangers.
Other environmental hazards include seeking anomalies and strange, sometimes deadly visions.
- These visions play a role in the game’s plot, and also serve as moral judgment of Artyom’s behavior, along with his actions during certain situations involving hostile human organizations.
- Depending on these choices, the game will reach one of the two available endings.

March 17 – 1995 – Descent – DOS

Plot:
- The Post-Terran Minerals Corporation (PTMC) digs up minerals on all nine planets of the solar system, employing humans and robots to do its job.
  - Unfortunately, the mining robots are now being controlled by a hacker, and have taken the human workers hostage.
  - The PTMC has tried to get the robots back under their control, but communication with the mining stations has been lost.
  - In desperation, the PTMC modifies a Pyro-GX ship for combat and hires a mercenary, codenamed “Material Defender”, to fly it.
  - The mission is to destroy the infected mines and rescue human hostages, destroying any hostile robot that gets in the way.
Descent is a 3D first-person game that puts the player at the controls of the Pyro-GX spaceship.
- Descent is notable in that the player travels through various interior locations (mines) but can do so in 720 degrees of movement.
  - The ship however only moves forward and backward in any of the directions it is facing.
  - The ship is able to use a variety of weapons scattered as power-ups throughout each level.
  - They include: standard lasers, the Vulcan Cannon (a chaingun-like weapon), the Spreadfire Cannon (a rapidly firing, shotgun-like energy weapon), the Plasma Cannon (a rapidly firing energy weapon more suited for medium-range combat), and the Fusion Cannon (fires a ball of energy that’s more powerful the longer it is charged it up, but could destroy the ship).
  - All of these weapons, except for the Vulcan Cannon, use the ship’s energy supply.
  - The Pyro-PX is also capable of firing regular concussion missiles, homing missiles, proximity bombs (sits in the sky, then explodes when something gets close to it), smart missiles (more powerful homing missiles that fire out homing energy balls upon impact with their target), and Mega Missiles (the ultimate weapons of mass destruction).
The goal of each level is to locate and destroy the mine’s reactor.
- Once completed, there are only 45 seconds to find the escape hatch to get out of the mine before it explodes.
- As progress is made through the game, the AI will adapt to player’s strategies and attempt to prevent the player from reaching the goals.
This was the first 3D game Josh can remember playing.

March 18 – 1992 – Minesweeper – Windows 3.x

Minesweeper is a puzzle game in which the player is presented with a board filled with mines, without knowing what fields they occupy.
- When the player clicks on a field a number appears on it, indicating how many mines are located in the fields nearest to it.
- The player then clicks on other fields, trying to avoid mines.
- If the player makes a mistake, the mine will explode and the game is over.
- The game features three difficulty levels, distinguished by the size of the board – the bigger the board, the higher the difficulty level.

March 19 – 2007 – Tetris Evolution – Xbox 360

Tetris Evolution is one of the many officially-licensed Tetris games. The game features seven game modes, several of which return from Tetris Worlds.
- Marathon – Standard, timeless Tetris, where the goal is to clear as many lines as possible.
- Ultra – Try to earn as many points as possible in a timed game.
- Cascade – Clearing lines can cause placed pieces to fall, potentially clearing more lines for big points.
- Race – Clear a set number of lines as quickly as possible.
- Score – Reach a designated score as quickly as possible.
- Hotline – Clearing specific highlighted lines will earn bonus points.
- Go Low – The lower the stack is, the more points are gained from clearing a line.
Also included are both local multiplayer and online play over Xbox Live for up to four players.
- There are also a variety backgrounds and BGM to choose from.

Tidbits

Fallout 76 role-playing group The New Responders is making an in-game procedural drama, bringing in other members of the community to join the story and solve the mystery
- Episodes are broadcast weekly live on Twitch and then archived afterwards on YouTube
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars cartoon is finally coming to Disney Plus on April 2nd, along with other Star Wars side-projects like Caravan of Courage and The Story of the Faithful Wookie
- Though it’s no longer canon to the Star Wars universe, the series of shorts from the mind that brought us Dexter’s Lab and Samurai Jack is just fantastic and very much worth watching
The Snyder Cut of the Justice League movie is out today on HBO Max, so we’ll have to see if doubling the length of movie can make it into a better one
- Don’t adjust your TV when you’re watching though- the whole film is shown in a 4:3 display ratio, because Snyder wanted it fully IMAX-ready
Part of the ongoing GameStop stock saga has seen the leak of new GameStop Social spaces, including mini LAN centres and tables for card and board games (presumably once it’s safe to do so)
- If these kinds of things come to EB Games north of the border as well, along with the new push to digital and same-day delivery, this could be a renaissance for the video game retailer
Photo backup service and self-professed online privacy experts pCloud have apparently run an analysis of Apple’s app privacy labels and determined that Instagram and Facebook are “the most invasive apps” when it comes to third party data
- Surprising no-one
Rogers Communications is apparently looking to buy out Shaw, becoming Canada’s second-largest cellular and cable provider
- Canada already has some of the world’s highest costs for cell phone and internet plans, and the $26B plan probably wouldn’t improve the situation
Netflix is reportedly testing a new feature that will show warnings to anyone allegedly sharing their login with someone outside of their home
- The warning pops up asking you to verify their access through a code texted to their phone, but so far there haven’t been any repercussions to just clicking “Verify later”

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PS2J 333 News – Alan’s Epic POTG

February 5, 2021
Tagged as: 14.5, 2018, 2033, 2d, 4K, 60fps, Activision, ads, advertising, Alan, Apple, automatic, avalanche, battlepass, beamforming, beta, Blizzard, cade janus, Call Of Duty, cancer, cartoon, character creator, charging, clayton haugen, controller, controls, copy, copyright, couch party, dating, dating sim, deadly, destruction allstars, development, Devil May Cry, dualsense, EA, enhanced, epic, Epic Games, Facebook, FaceID, first date, First Person, for the king, Free Games, game, God Of War, Google, gorgeous, gradius, hair, hdr, hellscape, hotseat edition, improved, infinity ward, information, infringement, interface, iOS, iPhone, jesse jacobs, Josh, Kirby, last light, legendary edition, lens flare, lobby, makeup, mara, mask, Mass Effect, metro, mi air charge, Microsoft, model, modern warfare, modernized, monster prom, Multiplayer, narrative, notification, november renaissance, nuclear war, performance, physics, platformer, Pokemon, Post Apocalyptic, Privacy, prom, ps5, psychadelic, redux, relationship, restaurant, roguelike, RPG, series, shoot ’em up, Shooter, side scrolling, Silent Hill, SimCoaster, sneak, Sony, spinch, stadia, stealth, stealth bastard deluxe, story, strategy, super meat boy, surgeon simulator, swimsanity, table manners, tabletop, tactical espionage arsehole, the medium, The Sims, third party, tracking, Transmission, transparency, Twitch, ui, underwater, voice chat, watch, wireless, world building, XBox, xiaomi

Free Games

Epic Games
- For The King
  - 2017
  - Strategic RPG with tabletop and roguelike elements and attractive polygonal visuals. Each playthrough is unique with procedural maps, quests, and events. Single player, local, or online co-op
- Metro: Last Light Redux
  - 2015
  - The sequel to Metro: 2033, it’s a post-apocalyptic first person shooter following a young soldier living in the Moscow Metro after a devastating nuclear war has left the surface world uninhabitable
Twitch
- Spinch
  - 2020
  - Side-scrolling psychedelic platformer from the mind of award-winning Canadian cartoonist Jesse Jacobs, that plays like a surreal Super Meat Boy as Spinch goes on a quest to rescue a litter of its missing offspring
- Stealth Bastard Deluxe
  - 2012
  - Subtitled “Tactical Espionage Arsehole”, this 2D stealth platformer has you sneaking through a deadly facility that seems determined to get you
- Monster Prom: Hotseat Edition
  - 2018
  - 2D narrative dating sim with both singleplayer and multiplayer modes with a randomized story that has you deciding how to spend your last six weeks before prom, going through different events and gaining stats while trying to improve relationships with whoever catches your eye
- Swimsanity! – Couch Party Edition
  - 2020
  - Multiplayer 2D underwater shoot-em-up with co-op and versus game modes, and both online and local play. It’s like Gradius in the ocean with your friends
- Table Manners
  - 2020
  - Physics-based dating simulator that puts the hand from Surgeon Simulator into a variety of venues for dates, from conveyor belt sushi to a plane going through a series of dives

Facebook has begun asking users to opt in to activity tracking ahead of Apple’s upcoming tracking transparency changes coming in iOS 14.5

Some iOS users have already begun seeing a new notification when launching the app, set to appear before Apple’s own notification and clarifying why they think you should let them track you
- It basically says that if you let them use your app and website activity you get:
  - Personalized ads
  - “Support businesses that rely on ads to reach customers”
    - That one might carry more weight if the majority of Facebook ads didn’t seem to be knockoffs and scams
- They also mention that it won’t give them access to new types of information, but that’s really just saying they’ve been gathering it without permission so far

Xiaomi has revealed true wireless charging technology with their ‘Mi Air Charge’, able to charge devices from across the room

With no cables or stands this new tech can send 5W of power to each device, using advanced spatial positioning and beamforming energy transmission
- 5W isn’t much, but as a slow trickle-charge throughout the day it would definitely be a nice boost
Xiaomi has apparently developed a special charging unit that can accurately detect the location of a compatible smartphone, then use an array of 144 antennas to transmit millimeter-wide waves directly to the phone
And they say that physical objects don’t do anything to reduce efficiency, though I’d like to see the potential health impacts of getting electricity beamed through your body, especially long-term
Xiaomi has currently developed it with smartphones it mind, but they’re looking to expand the tech to smartwatches and other wearables, as well as smart speakers, desk lamps, and more
Disney Made a wireless powered room
- https://www.iflscience.com/technology/disney-researchers-make-wireless-power-transfer-breakthrough/

Activision could be in some legal hot water after introducing a new character to their Call of Duty: Modern Warfare battlepass

Writer and photographer Clayton Haugen is alleging that the company intentionally modelled the new character, an operator named Mara, after his own character, Cade Janus, from a short story called November Renaissance
Hausen has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit saying that Activision Blizzard and Infinity Ward willfully intended to model Mara after Cade Janus, including hiring the same model, using the same makeup professional, and instructing her to style the model’s hair exactly as she had done for Haugen’s photographs, even using the same hair piece extension

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is coming on May 14th, with a lot of fanciness and lens flares

The collection includes world-building enhancements, improved interfaces and UI, and modernized controls for the first instalment, along with a ton of visual improvements and changes like pumping things up to 4K and HDR
They’ve also increased the options in the character creator and unified it across all three games
It all looks pretty good, but judging by the screenshots released so far they went a little ham sandwich with the lens flares and really brightening up some of the creepier scenes

Destruction AllStars is showing off the dark side of the PS5’s fancy controller

The colourful, vibrant destruction-derby style game has taken an interesting approach to voice chat, automatically using the Dualsense controller as a microphone and headset by default
This can be turned off for each match, but it will automatically turn it self back on again next time treating you once more to the audio hellscape that is online gaming

This Week In Gaming History

January 30 – 2001 – SimCoaster – Windows

SimCoaster is the third and final game in the Theme Park series.
- It uses the same graphic engine as the previous game Theme Park World.
- It is a theme park management game where players build their own theme park and attract as much visitors as possible.
- This time there are also grandparents of the little visitors who need to be entertained.
This version focuses more on the management side of running a park.
- It contains various types of business related to campaigns and objectives, such as bringing in a certain number of guests to a ride.
- By completing these challenges, promotions can be gained. As with the previous game in the series, players can walk around in their park in a first-person mode and go on the rides.
The game had an appearance in the cool action movie “Cradle 2 the Grave” starring Jet Li and DMX.
- In the movie released in 2003 by Warner Bros. a little daughter Vanessa of main protagonist played by DMX was very interested in playing this game and even several seconds of her playing were watched.
- This action has defined the SimCoaster as an interesting game for smart girls with an art in their minds.
The title is SimCoaster only in the United States
- Elsewhere, it is titles, Theme Park INC.

January 31 – 1999 – Silent Hill – PlayStation

You play Harry Mason, a normal man, with no powers or training of any kind.
- You must search through the town of Silent Hill, looking for your daughter.
- You will come across many people, some friendly, some not.
- mYou must visit many different areas, such as the school, and the church.
- Will Harry find his daughter and safely get out, or is there more to this town than a simple fog layer?
PS2J 162 and 168 are a two part Silent Hill history
- Josh keeps insisting that he will go back through these and remake these as more entertaining content.
- But the more dry example is available if people are interested.
The PS1 version of Silent Hill appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

February 1 – 1995 – Kirby’s Avalanche – SNES

The First Annual Dream Land’s Avalanche Competition is about to get under way, and as Kirby and a host of characters from the Kirby series, you can join the tournament and become Avalanche king.
Kirby’s Avalanche is a Puyo Puyo variant, and has you stacking colored blobs similar in a way to Tetris.
- When a certain amount of one color is stacked, an explosion occurs and the screen clears of those blobs, which then appear in the other players screen (either the CPU or a second player).
- When the other player’s screen is so full of blobs that they can’t make another move, you move onto the next round, and so on until the final boss.
- The winner of that match is then crowned the Avalanche king.
This game is almost exactly the same as Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine for the Genesis.
- Only the Robotnik/Sonic theme has been replaced by a Kirby theme.
- That’s because both games were actually developed by Compile and are based on their Puyo Puyo games.
- Thanks to Roedie on Moby Games to point that out

February 2 – 2009 – 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness – Windows

4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness is a game created for the Global Game Jam that tests the boundaries of what defines a game.
- If the program runs for four minutes and 33 seconds—no further user input is needed—the player wins.
- The catch is that it must be the only copy running in the entire world at that time—the program checks over the Internet to see if anyone else is running the game, and if someone is, the program will immediately shut itself down.
- The only graphics are a white progress bar that inches across the screen as time passes.
The game is inspired by John Cage’s musical composition 4′33″, which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of complete silence.
- The uniqueness of the piece is established through the background sounds in the environment, which makes the experience different for each listener.

February 3 – 2015 – Poké Doll Grabber – Browser

Available through the Pokémon Global Link website, Poké Doll Grabber is a simple game in which the player guides the claw of a crane machine up to the top of the screen.
- Along the way, they must guide the claw, which is clutching five Poké Dolls, past obstacles that could knock one of the dolls loose.
- They can move it left and right, or rapidly move it upwards, though horizontal movements can cause the claw to swing and hit an obstacle anyway.
- Upon reaching the top of the screen, the game ends, and the player will be given their score and will receive a random item that can be sent back to the player’s 3DS Pokémon RPG.
Playing the game costs Poké Miles, which are obtained by using multiplayer features in the 3DS Pokémon games and sent to the Global Link by syncing one’s save file to the internet.
- Three different levels of the game are available, which cost the same number of miles but offer differing prizes.

February 4 – 2000 – The Sims – Windows

The simulation game that people, like Josh, started wasting days, weeks, months of their lives to perfecting the experience of digital lives.
The Sims was originally going to be called “Home Tactics,” and would have an entirely different focus.
- Will Wright originally designed it to be completely about building houses.
- When someone suggested a feature involving letting people move in to determine the quality of the house, the focus completely changed.
- Developers were having more fun watching the people than building the house.
- The design goals were directed towards Sims, and architecture was left as a side bonus.
Sims Trivia

- You can put your own MP3s in the music folder in the game’s directory and they will be played on the radio.
- After managing a household for 100 days you will be rewarded with information etc. about the creators of the game.
- The game is listed in the 2008 Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition as the best selling PC game of all time, with 16 million sales worldwide since the original launch.
- The PC version of The Sims appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Febuary 5 – 2008 – Devil May Cry 4 – PS3/XBox 360 (North America)

This time the player gets cast as Nero, a member of the Order of the Sword who worships Sparda, in addition to playing as the previous games’ protagonist, Dante.
- The game follows the story of Nero in which witnesses the assassination of the leader of the Order of the Sword, Sanctus, by no other than Dante.
- The murder causes chaos and Sanctus’ deputy, Credo, orders Nero to go after Dante, who is heading for Fortuna Castle.
Nero is equipped with a sword (Red Queen), a revolver (Blue Rose), and powers from his Devil Bringer arm that works like Dante’s Devil Trigger.
- They also give Nero special abilities: pulling and pushing enemies, slamming them on the ground and zooming across areas.
- Overall gameplay with Nero is still hack-and-slash but with fresh attack styles and techniques.
- Dante joins later in the game for some levels of his own.
- His gameplay stays mostly intact with the four attack styles: Trickster, Sword Master, Gunslinger, and Royal Guard.
Devil May Cry 4 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Tidbits

Google has apparently shut down its internal game development studio that was tasked with making games for the Stadia, leaving many wondering if this is the beginning of the end
- The service will stick around focused on third-party games, but time will tell if this gets added to the list of services that Google pumps up and then lets fall by the wayside
Apple’s upcoming iOS 14.5 update is in beta now, and it’s bringing some cool features like support for PS5 and Xbox Series controllers, as well as the ability to unlock your phone with your watch instead of your face if you’re wearing a mask
- The unlock is pretty slick- if your Apple Watch is unlocked and on your wrist, and FaceID detects you’re wearing a mask, it will just unlock and send a notification to your watch. Best part, in case someone else has grabbed your phone, that notification has a big “Lock iPhone” button on it
God of War 2018’s enhanced performance patch for the PS5 is live now, cranking everything up to 11 with 60FPS and 4K resolutions

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PS2J News 329 – 2020 New Game Plus

January 8, 2021
Tagged as: 17th century, action, ad, adapter, adaptor, adobe flash, Adventure, advertising, air dodge, AirPods, Alan, along the edge, alt frequencies, antitrust, apocalypse, apology, Apple, Arcade, audio, backdoor, Batman, Bayonetta, bioshock, bird buddy, bird feeder, Blackthorne, bleed 2, Blizzard, Born Into Darkness, Bose, breakdown, bridge constructor, Brood War, browser, Bustin Out, capitol, case, CD Projekt Red, childhood, China, co-op, Coffee Forever, combat, Command and Conquer, commander, conspiracy, construction, corrupted souls, crying suns, cyberattack, Cyberpunk 2077, dark, data collection, Dead Or Alive 4, death to 2020, Diablo, Digimon, Diplomacy, disinformation, DOS, drive cancel, ecosystem, email, empire, emulator, Encryption, end of life, epic, Epic Games, european, ex mode, excalibur, expensive, Facebook, Fantasy, fears, federal, FFX, fighting, Final Fantasy 10, fire, First Person, fleet, Free Games, free internet, Galaxy, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Government, greedfall, hilarious, hyper drive mode, Indian in the Cupboard, information, Instagram, Internet Archive, island, jetbrains, Josh, key, king arthur, King of Fighters, kitchen, knight, lara croft, launch, Law Enforcement, lift, linux, Little Nightmares, Macintosh, maneater, marketing, max, maya, mi10, mi11, Microsoft, misfit, mockumentary, monopoly, mystery, N64, nebula, Netflix, newspaper, Newton Adventure, next-gen, nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, noise-cancelling, nutrition label, obstacle, One, open-world, over ear, overcooked, party, password, Paws and Claws, permission, physics, platformer, playground, Playstation, Pong, power, Privacy, PS4, ps5, Punch Club, puzzle, refund, riot, rise of the tomb raider, rogue-lite, roguelike, RPG, s21, Samsung, sargasso, science fiction, security, senate, Sentry, series, Shadow Hearts, shadow of the tomb raider, shark, Shooter, side scrolling, ski, slope, small business, snowmobile, solarwinds, Sole Survivor, Sonic Battle, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sony, South Park, Space, Star Craft, state, stealth, Steam, steel, strawman, Super Bubble Pop, suppressing, suspend, sword legacy: omen, system shock 2, tactical, Thandor, The Broken Land, the maw, The Sims, tiananmen square, Tides of Darkness, time loop, Tomb Raider, transparency, TRIHAYWBFRFYH, Trump, Tuper Tario Tros, Turn Based, Twitch, Twitter, united states, Update, USB, Vet, video chat, visual novel, void ark, void bastards, wall, Warcraft 2, WhatsApp, When Ski Lifts Go Wrong, whimsical, Whos Your Daddy, Windows, wire, XBox, xiaomi, xiii, zoom

Free Games

Epic Games
- Crying Suns
  - 2019
  - Story-rich tactical rogue-lite that puts you in the role of a space fleet commander as you explore a mysteriously fallen empire, uncovering the truth about it and yourself
Twitch
- Overcooked
  - 2016
  - A co-op party game where you and up to three friends work together in a kitchen to prepare meals, working around fires, shifting floors, and other obstacles
- Sword Legacy Omen
  - 2018
  - Turn-based tactical RPG in a re-imagined King Arthur mythos where you play a vengeful knight in search of the long-lost Excalibur
- Bridge Constructor Playground
  - 2014
  - Classic physics-based bridge building puzzle gameplay, but now with no fixed budget and next to no limitations on building materials
- Alt Frequencies
  - 2019
  - An audio mystery set in a time loop. Record, rewind time and broadcast snippets of radio shows to expose radio hosts, conspiracy theorists, and politicians.
- Along the Edge
  - 2016
  - Interactive visual novel set in the European countryside, where your choices impact the main character’s personality and appearance.
- When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
  - 2019
  - Physics-based construction puzzler similar to Bridge Constructor, but this time you’re building different contraptions to carry skiers up the slopes with added control over the riders
- Void Bastards
  - 2019
  - Science-fiction roguelike first person shooter inspired by BioShock and System Shock 2. Can you lead the misfit prisoners of the Void Ark through the derelict spaceships and myriad dangers of the Sargasso Nebula?
Playstation
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
  - 2018
  - Action adventure game continuing the narrative from Rise of the Tomb Raider, following Lara Croft as she races to stop a Mayan apocalypse that she has unleashed
- GreedFall
  - 2018
  - Action RPG set in a 17th-century style fantasy world where you explore a remote island alongside other settlers, mercenaries, treasure hunters, and invaders, with combat, diplomacy, and stealth
- Maneater (PS5)
  - 2020
  - Open world action RPG where you start as a shark pup tasked with surviving the harsh world while eating your way up the ecosystem
  - People who recently purchased Maneater on either PS4 or PS5 have reportedly gotten automatic refunds from Sony, giving them free access to the PS4 version, but otherwise it’s only free on the PS5
Xbox
- Little Nightmares
  - 2017
  - A dark, whimsical side-scrolling platformer that will confront you with childhood fears as you escape The Maw- a vast, mysterious vessel inhabited by corrupted souls looking for their next meal.
- Bleed 2
  - 2017
  - Side-scrolling arcade action platformer featuring air-dodging, bullet-reflecting, and tons of bosses, like a 2D Bayonetta bullet-hell
- The King of Fighters XIII
  - 2010
  - A significantly modified entry in the King of Fighters fighting game series that removed the guard attack, critical counter, and clash systems, as well as the dynamic zooming camera, in favour of new enhancements to super moves, Hyper Drive mode, and Drive Cancel.

Facebook and Twitter finally locked Trump’s accounts this week after his disinformation and incitement led to a riot that breached the US capitol building

After years of being complicit with Trump’s hate speech under the guise of public interest, all it took was armed police having to retake the US Senate, killing four and arresting 52, for these platforms to recognize that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, nor does it mean you are entitled to a platform or an audience
This is what you get when you have websites dedicated to driving engagement with extreme, polarizing content under the guise of news or social interaction

A couple of sizeable cyberattacks came to light involving software development and network management tools, impacting everyone using tools from Jetbrains and SolarWinds (including the US government)

Security researchers apparently told SolarWinds that anyone could access their update server using the password ‘solarwinds123’, but since no action was taken hackers used that to push malicious updates to their software
Among the targets were dozens of email accounts and government encryption keys, showing pretty definitively that we can’t trust them with the encryption backdoors that they’ve been demanding for years

Apple stealth-dropped the new AirPods Max, wireless over-ear headphones with all the bells and whistles including a premium price tag

The stainless steel headphones bring the AirPods Pro featureset to over-ear sound quality, and apparently they sound great, but they also cost $780 CAD
- They make premium noise-cancelling headphones from Bose and Sony look downright affordable at half the price
They also come with a bizarre headphone-cozy to cover up the earcups and put them into sleep mode, but it’s a soft case that only covers the earcups with minimal protection
Also, if you want to use them wired instead of wireless you need to buy a separate lightning to 3.5mm cable specifically from Apple, and unlike competitors like Bose they won’t work wired if the battery is dead

US state and federal governments are suing Facebook in twin antitrust suits, looking to split up their monopoly over our digital lives including separating out Instagram and WhatsApp

Considering in the 6 years since purchasing WhatsApp the messaging went from “privacy is coded into our DNA” to “you can get some neat features if you let us connect your data” to now “if you want to use WhatsApp your data will be used for advertising and Facebook products”, I think they’ve got a pretty good shot
It would be great if they would pry Oculus out of there as well, but I haven’t seen mention of that anywhere

Cyberpunk 2077 had a rough launch, leading to refunds and even being pulled from digital stores after running abysmally on previous-generation consoles

And I do have to take back some of what I’ve said about the game- directors and marketing claimed the game was done months ago and the delays were caused by polish, but it just straight up wasn’t done. They needed more time, not more deadlines
- Apparently even though the next-gen version won’t be released till later this year they never showed it running on the Xbox One or PS4 before launch (you know, the consoles that it was released for), leading to a lot of disappointment when people received the game and saw that it looked so much worse than they expected
- CD Projekt Red released a statement apologizing for that, saying they should have spent more time making it run better
Hopefully they can continue to develop it into the game it should have been released as, leading up to its actual PS5/Xbox Series launch

Facebook’s begun using full-page newspaper ads to slam Apple’s upcoming privacy measures, claiming they’re standing up for small businesses, titled “Apple vs the free internet”

Taking the Epic Games approach, Facebook’s defending their practices by holding up a small-business strawman and saying that they just want to protect the little guy by getting to do whatever they want
The ads say that Apple’s changes will limit small and medium sized businesses ability to run personalized ads, leading to less bang for their buck, and that’s really all Facebook’s worried about. Not the fact that Facebook won’t have as much access to data they harvest on everyone to sell those very same ads.
This is very much the same problem that law enforcement is having with encryption and privacy- they’ve had free access to look through peoples’ windows for so long, they can’t stand the idea of people installing blinds and being allowed to close them if they want to
The privacy measure that has them up in arms, by the way, is just a popup asking if you want to allow an app to track your activity across other apps and websites. There’s a spot where they can explain why they need it, and buttons to either “Ask App not to Track” or “Allow”. That’s it.
- Maybe instead of wailing and tearing their shirts over this, crying to businesses that they have no choice but to comply with the tracking transparency features, Facebook should be convincing users why they should click Allow

These Weeks in Gaming History

December 8 – 1997 – Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor – Windows

This game is strictly multiplayer game.
- It broke records with the fact that there can be 51 players playing it at the same time.
- Every player has only one unit, and only one is to be the sole survivor.
- Otherwise, the graphic is same as in original Command & Conquer DOS and GOLD version, with some extra units as a difference.

December 9 – 1995 – WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness – DOS

WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness is a fantasy themed real-time strategy game and sequel to WarCraft: Orcs & Humansset on the world of Azeroth.
- With the conquest of the kingdom of Azeroth in the first war, the orcs are now preparing for an invasion of Lordaeron and conquer the remaining human, dwarven and elvisch realms.
- In an effort to counter this invasion the humans, elves and dwarves formed an alliance in the hope to avert the same fate the kingdom of Azeroth met.
The game comes with many new features such as fighting not only over land but also over sea and air, SVGA 640×480 resolution graphics with many newly-rendered buildings and units, multiplayer-support with up to eight players, as well as a Red Book audio soundtrack, and a scenario editor that allows players to design and create their own scenarios.
- The editor requires Windows 3.1 or greater, even though WarCraft II is a DOS-based game.

December 10 – 2020 – Cyberpunk 2077 – PS4, Xbox One, Windows

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification.
- You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality.
- You can customize your character’s cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.
Become a cyberpunk, an urban mercenary equipped with cybernetic enhancements and build your legend on the streets of Night City.
Enter the massive open world of Night City, a place that sets new standards in terms of visuals, complexity and depth.
Take the riskiest job of your life and go after a prototype implant that is the key to immortality.

December 11 – 2001 – Shadow Hearts – Playstation 2 North America

Yuri Hyuga is a young harmonixer: a man who possesses the power of transforming into demons.
- He meets Alice Elliot, a young British girl whose father was brutally murdered, and who is chased by a mysterious warlock who calls himself Roger Bacon.
- Yuri and Alice travel through the pre-war China, dealing with demons, evil magicians, and Japanese occupation army.
- The journey eventually takes them and their friends to Europe, where they have to confront their ultimate enemy, but also uncover the truth about their own pasts.
Shadow Hearts is a Japanese-style role-playing game set in a historical period (China and Europe of 1913, one year before the World War I) with plenty of supernatural elements mixed in.
- The game shares plot-related and stylistic traits with Koudelka, to which it can be considered a sequel.
- The player navigates a party of characters (up to three active combatants) over pre-rendered backgrounds.
- Combat with regular enemies occurs randomly. During battles, characters use regular attacks or cast spells.
- In addition to the regular health (HP) and magic points (MP), each character also has a special SP (“sanity points”) bar.
  - Sanity bar is gradually depleted in combat; when characters run out of SP, they become insane and hence uncontrollable, until their sanity is restored with items.
The game implements traditional turn-based combat style for the battles, adding to it a feature called Judgment Ring.
- Every time a character performs an attack, a ring with a spinning arrow appears on the top of the screen.
- If the player stops the arrow when it is over a critical area on the ring, the attack will be more powerful.
- However, missing the larger hit area will cancel the attack completely.
- Various types of attacks have rings of various difficulty; usually, the more powerful a spell is, the smaller the hit area is on the ring.
- The Judgment Ring is also used for other purposes; it can help the player reduce prices in stores, and is needed to solve several puzzles.
All characters except Yuri learn new abilities automatically when leveling up.
- Due to his demon-fusion abilities, Yuri can collect soul energy and use it to acquire various fusion forms.
- When Yuri transforms into a demon he gains unique abilities, and continues fighting with the party as a controllable character.
- He also has to travel to a graveyard in his own mental realm from time to time, in order to face his own inner demons and clear Malice, negative vengeful energy the party accumulates by killing enemies.

December 12 – 2000- Star Wars: Episode I – Obi-Wan’s Adventures – Game Boy Color

Play as Obi-Wan through many levels of battle droids, similar in style to Jedi Power Battles.
- You can use your lightsaber, blaster or the force to defeat the enemy and advance to the final showdown with Darth Maul.

December 13 – 1996 – Sonic Blast – Game Gear (Japan)

Sonic Blast was released for Game Gear in conjunction with Sonic 3D Blast (aka Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island) for Genesis/MD and Saturn.
- It boasted similarly rendered character sprites and colorful backgrounds.
- The game was yet another addition to the series, plus Sega had hoped it would be a boost to the dying Game Gear’s title selection at the time.
- Brazilian based TecToy re-released the game for Sega Master System in 1997, a year after the initial release (while many may think this is a pirated title, TecToy is indeed licensed to produce and release games under the Sega name).

December 14 – 2017 – Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory – PS4, PS Vita (Japan)

Brand new title from the “Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth”.
- Set in the near future, the line between the real and digital worlds is blurred, become a hacker and utilize computer viruses called Digimon to tackle the incidents caused by hostile hackers other Digimons.
Scan, raise, train and battle Digimon in classic turn-based gameplay!
- 「Adventure」…Take on the role of a hacker within the cyber space and resolve the digital woes! Command Digimons and utilize your hacking skills!
- 「Training」…Seek out Digimons and put them through intensive training before evolving into stronger breeds!
- 「Battle」…Form your very own Digimon team for battle! Take on fights effortless with mastery of Digimon skills and elements at your disposal!
  - A total of 320 Digimon variants available and a wide range of brand new support skills effectively expands your battle arsenal.
Team battle simulation & quests such as the ”Domination Battle”, ”Territory Contest” etc. along with enhanced online gameplay elements are added as well.
With just this title, you would have access to all the gameplay elements ”Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth“ world could ever offer!
Main story from the previous title ”Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth“ included with cross-save features and special bring-over bonus available as well!
New players could fully enjoy the ”Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth“ series like any existing players too!

December 15 – 1992 – Batman Returns – DOS

Frigid winter winds swept over an already chilled Gotham City.
- Random street crimes were running at an all-time high, despite the holidays.
- Down below, in the city’s frozen sewers, Oswald Cobblepot, known as The Penguin, planned more mayhem and schemed the take over of the frightened metropolis.
- His loyal army of missile-packing Penguin Commandos and the bizarre Red Triangle Circus Gang are energized by the evil genius of the web-footed orphan.
- A desperate call to Batman goes up.
Batman Returns is an adventure game with fighting sequences, based on the movie of the same name.
- Control Batman’s combat style, and help conduct relentless interrogations of The Penguins many allies.
- Use the Batcave computer to input clues, analyze evidence, and review enemy bios.
- You’re in charge of weapons, too.
- Stock Batman’s Utility belt with enough heat to match the diverse fighting styles of The Penguin and cold-blooded, sewer-dwelling minions.

December 16 – 2003 – The Sims: Bustin’ Out – GameCube, PS2, XBox

The Sims: Bustin’ Out is the console sequel to The Sims and the second Sims game to appear on the major consoles.
- Sims can now leave their house and visit all different kinds of locations.
In the mission-based Bust Out mode, the player starts at Mom’s house learning that evil Malcolm Langrabb is repossessing items from all the Sims homes.
- Your job is to make enough money to buy back all the goods and eventually evict him from his own mansion.
- The game also features an open-ended Freeplay mode.
Bustin’ Out’s big new features are the ability to visit and move between houses through the single player progression as well as an online multi-player mode for 2 people on the PS2.
- The servers for the online mode have since been shut down.

December 17 – 2002 – Super Bubble Pop – GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Xbox

A combination of Tetris and Bust-A-Move, Super Bubble Pop has you controlling a character along the bottom of the playfield, who you use to throw bubbles of different colours towards the other side of the playfield.
- As you throw them down the line, they will stack up in piles of six.
- Linking three bubbles together will pop them (remove them from the field), and if there is a stack of six, the bubbles on the way will form a new stack in front of it.
The aim of the game is to remove all bubbles from the field, but there is another way of completing a game.
- Tokens will appear during play, and by collecting enough, you can move on to the next round regardless of what you have on the playfield.

December 18 – 1998 – Star Craft: Brood War – Windows

StarCraft: Brood War is an add-on for StarCraft (requiring the full version of StarCraft) and a direct continuation of its story.
Plot:
- With the demise of the Overmind on the Protoss home world at the end of the original game, the Zerg are left leaderless.
  - In an attempt to regain control, a number of cerebrates merge to form a new Overmind. Kerrigan, a human/Zerg hybrid however wants to take control of the Zerg herself.
  - The Protoss are evacuating what is left of their people from their ruined home world.
  - Meanwhile the United Earth Directorate (UED) have learned of the recent developments in the sector.
  - Fearing for the safety of Earth they sent an expeditionary fleet there to secure it.
Brood War brings several changes to the game, altering some gameplay aspects of the game, the most important change being the addition of new units.
- The Terrans receive the Valkyrie, a craft with air-to-air fighting capabilities.
  - They also obtain the Medic, which can heal all non-mechanic units and, through upgrades, can use the Restore (remove all ailments on a unit) and Optical Flare (reduce the sight range of an enemy unit to 1) powers.
- The Zergs receive the Lurker, obtained after mutating an Hydralisk, which can, and actually must, burrow to attack.
  - They also gain the Devourer, after mutation of a Mutalisk, an air-to-air unit, whose acid shots have notably the specificity of temporarily lowering the enemy defense, allowing other units to do increased damage.
- The Protoss receive the Corsair, an air-to-air unit, which has access to the Disruption Web power (which, once cast, prevents targeted enemy units from firing outside of the web).
  - The Dark Templars, already seen in the original StarCraft are now a producable unit.
  - Their main strength lies in their permanent cloaking, allowing them to deliver their strong close combat attacks unharmed.
  - Additionally, in the same manner as two Templars can be merged as an Archon in StarCraft, two Dark Templars can now be merged to obtain a Dark Archon.
    - A Dark Archon has access to several powerful powers: Mind Control (giving permanent control of the targeted unit), Maelstrom (temporarily rendering all non-mechanical units within the target area unable to do anything) and Feedback (removes from a target unit the amount of energy it has available for special powers and inflicts it this amount as physical damage).
Besides the new units, some units already featured in StarCraft can now be upgraded in certain areas.
- For instance, the Terran Goliath can have the range of its ground-to-air missiles be tremendously increased. Similarly, the Zerg Ultralisk can now receive speed and armor upgrades.
Other changes include a better AI and some alterations of the cost of certain units.
Three new campaigns are available.
- In order, a Protoss campaign featuring 8 missions, a Terran campaign also featuring 8 missions and a Zerg campaign comprising 10 missions (plus a bonus mission if some requirements are met in mission 9).
The add-on also comes with about 100 multiplayer maps.

December 19 – 1994 – Blackthorne – DOS

The planet Tuul was a peaceful place, until the evil warrior Sarlac used the power of the Darkstone to take control.
- Blackthorne’s father, the good King Vlaros, sent him to Earth just as his kingdom crumbled around him.
- Now, twenty years later, Blackthorne is grown and must return to Tuul to free it from the clutches of Sarlac.
Blackthorne is a platform action game played from a side-view with non-scrolling backgrounds.
- It has certain similarities to Prince of Persia, being set in maze-like environments and focusing on exploration and occasional puzzle-solving.
- Blackthorne fights enemies by shooting at them.
- His default weapon, a pump action shotgun, can be upgraded throughout the course of the game.
- Various types of bombs can be used to damage enemies, blow open doors, or destroy generations.
- Keys must be often found to gain access to new areas.

December 20 – 2013 – TRIHAYWBFRFYH (The Rapture Is Here And You Will Be Forcibly Removed From Your Home) – Browser, Mac, Windows

TRIHAYWBFRFYH is a short experimental game based on the theme of loneliness in the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
- Set in a misty setting with fields, hills and forests, the protagonist experiences the last 20 minutes before rapture, the end of the world.
- A large alien or celestial shape looms above while time counts down.
- The player is free to explore the environment in any direction.
- Four type of trails, marked by large vertical columns in a different colour, can be tracked.
- When the character gets near one of them, part of a Lovecraft story is narrated and the coloured sphere appears somewhere else.
There are no clear goals in the game except to explore, listen to the stories and hear the electronic music drone on as the inevitable rapture gets near.
- At regular intervals lightning may strike or an earthquake may occur.
- Movement is done with four keys along with the mouse to look.
- The secondary mouse button provides a zoomed-in view.

December 21 – 2000 – The Broken Land – Windows

An RPG game in the dungeon crawl style of Diablo.
- The basic story involves you saving Heaven (not Earth) by re-combining the 5 pieces Heaven was split into by a battle with the gods and the forces of evil.
- Game play is hack-and-slash with limited interaction with NPCs and merchants.
- Characters have limited upgrades available to them as do the weapons and armor.
- The game was released with no printed manual (it was included on the disk, but was inaccurate to the actual game play).

December 22 – 1998 – South Park – N64

A comet is heading toward South Park, causing many of the enemies from early seasons of the shows (including cows, aliens, and clones) to rise up and attack.
- The player takes control of Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and Stan to fight through the town in a first-person perspective.
- Features new dialogue from the original voice actors on the show.
Single player takes the form of a “Story” mode divided into five episodes and fifteen linear levels.
- The player will face weak minions (which change based on the episode), plus occasional sub-bosses which will try to escape into town.
- The final level is devoted to a unique boss fight.
- Players use quirky weapons ranging from infinite yellow snowballs to cow launchers and toxic Terrance and Phillip dolls.
- Every weapon has a secondary fire, and players switch between the four main characters when they switch weapons – each of the four kids shares a single life bar because of this.
- The kids will comment on game actions as they occur, with heavier profanity censored with bleeps.
- The kids will get angrier (and fouler) as their health depletes, until they finally give up on saving the town and go home.
A multiplayer mode lets players take characters and weapons they unlock in Story mode into small deathmatch arenas.
- The PlayStation version supports 2 players, the N64 does 4, and the PC version allows players to go online to search for opponents through GameSpy.
- Players can set standard victory options like knockouts or time limits.
- Voice samples for multiplayer are also included, so the characters will make comments and taunts when hit.
Graphics are rendered in 3D, in a style approximating that of the show.
- Draw distance is limited by a heavy fog, with varying severity based on the platform.
- None of the environments are interactive, and only enemies respond to weapon hits.
- The N64 version supports the Expansion Pak.

December 23 – 2015 – Who’s Your Daddy – Linux, Mac, PC

Who’s Your Daddy is a two-player versus game in which one player controls a bumbling father, while the other takes the role of his infant son.
- The father is responsible for the baby’s well-being, and as such needs to work to baby-proof the house.
- He can also perform chores that will grant special abilities that help him keep an eye on the child and any hazards.
- However, the player controlling the baby is given the goal of taking his own life through whatever means are available, such as drowning himself or ingesting poisonous chemicals.
- The baby wins if he is able to commit suicide, while the father wins if he is able to keep his son alive until time runs out.

December 24 – 2009 – Tuper Tario Tros. – Browser

Tuper Tario Tros. is a mash-up of two classic games: Super Mario Bros. and Tetris.
- Inspired by the puzzle platforming in Lucidity, this is the first in a series of deep water experiments by the developers to test experimental game prototypes.
- The game starts like a traditional Super Mario Bros. platformer clone with the classic elements, enemies and power-ups, until Mario encounters a wall that cannot be passed.
- From that point on, it is possible to switch to Tetris-style gameplay with the press of a key to move around and rotate falling blocks to redesign the level, creating lines to make blocks disappear or building bridges to cross gaps.
While in Tetris mode, Mario cannot be moved, but the gameplay is not paused.
- Enemies continue to move around and the screen also moves forward at a steady pace.
- Blocks can also be used to crush enemies.
- At the end of the level, there is an additional section where both modes need to be used quickly in succession to complete a time-limited end sequence.

December 25 – 2010 – Coffee Forever – Mac, Windows

In Coffee Forever, you must find coffee!
- You begin on a screen that is mostly hidden.
- You must move about the screen, revealing more of the screen and finding and gathering cups of coffee.
- Once the minimum number of them are found, the level is complete.
- You must find the minimum number of cups before your coffee meter, a.k.a. the timer, runs out.
- Also, be careful as there are spikes on the playing field. If the time runs out or you hit a spike, you lose a life.
- Lose all your lives and the game is over.

December 26 – 2001 – Final Fantasy X – PS2

Tidus is a young athlete who lives in a futuristic city of Zanarkand – “the city that never sleeps”.
- He plays blitzball, a ball game where players throw the ball while flying around.
- Suddenly, a terrible disaster happens.
- A huge dark wave engulfs the city, spawning monsters.
- Tidus comes in contact with the mysterious creature, and as a result finds himself in a different world, a thousand years into the future.
- The civilization he is used to doesn’t exist any more.
- He learns that the world he knew was destroyed by Sin, a terrible being that is believed to be indestructible.
- Tidus meets a young summoner named Yuna, and joins her as a guardian on her quest to put an end to Sin.
Final Fantasy X is Japanese-style role-playing game set in a world somewhat similar to South Asia.
- Only individual locations can be physically explored; there is no “world map” in the game, and exploration is fairly linear.
- Enemy encounters are random; the game abandons the series’ traditional ATB (active-time battle) combat in favor of a Conditional Turn-Based Battle system, in which the turns of the participants are determined by characters’ stats and actions, with turn order displayed in the upper corner of the screen.
The game also departs from the usual leveling up system.
- There are no character levels in the game: instead, experience points received after battles can be allocated by the player directly to upgrade the characters’ parameters.
- Each character has his or her special “sphere map”, with straight or branching paths containing spots that increase the character’s personal statistics, or teach him or her active and passive abilities.
- The characters are given distinct class attributes, and it is possible top switch between all the party members during the same battle. Monster summons (called aeons in the game) now behave like playable characters, have their own hit points (HP), and can fight for the party until defeated.
Conversations that occur during cutscenes have voice overs, for the first time in the series.
- The game features various mini-games, the most prominent of which are blitzball tournaments.

December 27 – 1995 – The Indian In The Cupboard – Mac, Windows

Inside of a young boy’s cupboard, the tiny toy figurine native american named Little Bear has come to life.
- Letting the tiny man guide you through several activities will allow you to bring more toys to life and show your accomplishments on your wampum belt.
- Some of the available activities include the bead pictures game, where you practice your artistry with carved Iroquois templates and colored beads.
- There’s also the Music Mimicry game and the Symbols game and several more.
- Completing all the activities successfully opens up a new area, the Bedroom 3-D environment and makes available six different quests.

December 28 – 2004 – MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf – Xbox

MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf takes place roughly one year after the original MechAssault game.
- This is not a simple extension of the first game.
- There are a lot of new missions, vehicles (mechs, tanks, and whatever else the player can find), and worlds to explore.
- Jump in and let’s go for a ride.
The game adds new gameplay elements to the system used in MechAssault.
- In the original game, the player was a Mech pilot and nothing else.
- Here, the player is the only pilot in the game world.
- This means that the player can now get out of a Mech and drive someone else’s Mech.
- Want to drive a tank or some of the other vehicles?
- Well, now it is possible.
- Jump in many of the vehicles and take one for a ride
- Of course, the Battlemech still rules the field.
Like the original game, Xbox Live is fully supported for multiplayer gaming.

December 29 – 2005 – Dead or Alive 4 – Xbox 360

The fourth installment in the Dead or Alive series (excluding Beach Volleyball) continues in a similar vein of fighting game.
- Delivering another dose of combo heavy action set in a variety of highly interactive locations.
With Helena assuming control over DOATEC an eclectic cast of fighters from all corners of the world all battle each other for some personal goal. Each character has vastly different, and often unusual, motives.
In the main game’s story mode each character fights through a series of encounters, often with a bizarre context eg. taking exception to cruelty to a T-Rex and a fight over a fresh lettuce are both examples of the rather odd but still hilarious Japanese humour.
XBOX Live support allows players to watch fights while waiting for their turn in the arena.
- VOIP is also supported, as with many Live games.
Featuring a graphical upgrade and an improved fighting system (tested by some top DOA players before release) Dead or Alive 4 is aimed not only at the older DOA players, but enticing new gamers due to the less intimidating control system, and giving slightly less advantage to the experienced.

December 30 – 2010 – Pong Solitare – Browser

Pong Solitaire is a joke game from the web comic artist Steve Napierski.
- It is a mix between Pong and Solitaire.
- The gameplay is similar to the classic Pong game, except that the opponent’s paddle occupies the entire height of the screen.
- That way you can only lose, as you grow tired of bouncing it back to yourself all the time.

December 31 – 1996 – Diablo – Windows

Story:
- Long ago a secret war raged between Heaven and Hell, each using humanity as its pawns.
  - While the Prime Evils of Hell were engaged in war their lesser lieutenants conspired to overthrow them.
  - They mutinied suddenly with the combined forces of Hell, overwhelming the three Primes.
  - Stripped of their power, they were banished to the mortal realm.
  - Human agents of Heaven, upon discovering this, found the three Primes and sealed them within gemstone prisons, each of them sent to a different corner of the earth and kept under guard to prevent them from escaping.
- As years turns to centuries, however, the power of Heaven’s agents waned, until eventually not even the people of the town of Tristram knew that buried deep under their chapel was the soul of the Lord of Terror, Diablo.
  - As the strength of his prison waned Diablo reached out into the world, corrupting the dreams of the land’s good king, driving him to attack his neighbors.
  - The nation of Khanduras fought wars with no intention of winning, desiring only slaughter and suffering.
  - Now the lands lay scorched, home only to monsters and the dead.
  - Rumors spread of a way to stop the demons, as well as rumors of great wealth, and both draw adventurers from far to the small town of Tristram.
Players start by choosing their avatar’s class: either Warrior, Rogue, or Sorcerer.
- Warriors have the highest maximum strength and can repair weapons and armor inside the dungeon, but this will lower the item’s maximum durability.
- The Rogue has the highest maximum dexterity and can both see and disarm traps on treasure chests.
- The Sorcerer has the highest maximum magic attribute and can recharge the charges on a spellcasting staff at the cost of his own mana.
Characters can equip armor, weapons, and accessories found in the chapel’s shifting dungeons, but strong equipment will have minimum attribute requirements to be worn.
- Most equipment will have randomized stats, but some strong monsters will drop Unique weapons with set stats.
- Magic can be learned by finding magic tomes, and leveled up by finding multiples of the same spell tome, but advanced spell levels can not be learned if the character’s magic stat is too low.
- Upon destroying enough monsters to level up the player is rewarded with additional attribute points to distribute to whichever attributes they wish.
- Occasionally the few people left in town will inform the player of a job they would like done, either an exceptionally strong monster that must be slain or a unique item found deep in the dungeon, and will reward the player in kind upon completion of the quest.
Diablo can be played cooperatively with 1 to 3 other players over LAN or BattleNet with the PC versions, or with 1 player locally on the PlayStation.
- Players can team up to survive the depths of the dungeons, or turn on each other to steal one another’s items from their corpse.
- The quest unique zones are removed from the online version of a dungeon, and instead quest monsters will be found wandering the level that would normally lead to their unique area.

January 1 – 1990 – Hugo’s House of Horrors – DOS

Hugo’s sweetheart Penelope has vanished after visiting a haunted house on a babysitting job.
- In order to save her, Hugo must explore the area around, within, and beneath the house and solve its mysteries, while surviving its many perils.
Hugo’s House of Horrors is a graphic adventure game, controlled with a combination of the arrow keys for movement, and typed commands such as eat steak to interact with the environment.
- Some challenges are puzzles which must be solved by clever use of items found in the house, while others require quick and careful movement, or test the player’s knowledge.
This game is the first game in the Hugo’s House of Horrors shareware trilogy.
- This full game was released as a taster for the full trilogy which includes this game plus the titles Hugo’s Mystery Adventure, Hugo’s Amazon Adventure, a hint book and an automatic solver which plays the game like a movie.

January 2 – 2010 – Newton Adventure – Linux, Mac, Windows

Newton Adventure is a 2D platform game with a unique feature: in order to get through the 21 levels, the player has to rotate them and change gravity at 360°.
By using this special rotating power, the hero can jump to distant platforms, make enemies fall or move objects.
Divided in four themed worlds (arctic, jungle, Vatican and Egypt), the 20 levels have the same goals: find the door to exit and the key that open it.
- The key is an object to be brought by pushing it or by making it fall using gravity change.
Aside from completing the levels, the goals is to make highest scores possible, by killing enemies, collecting items or accessing to special bonus zones.

January 3 – 2007 – Paws & Claws: Pet Vet – Nintendo DS

You Love Animals and They Love You!
Now you can pamper and rescue all of your favorite creatures at your own Paws & Claws Pet Vet.
- Nurture and love the animals to grow your business and become every animal’s best friend!
Features:
- Nurse all of your injured patients back to health through 20+ cases
- Choose from 10+ different kinds of animals, from cockatoos and guinea pigs to dogs and horses
- Visit the 3D clothing shop and choose from 9 cute outfits
- Become the best vet and you’ll grow your business into the biggest pet clinic in town!

January 4 – 2001 – Thandor: The Invasion – Windows

After the defeat of the Golraths, the Alliance of Averes have collapsed and the allies have turned enemies.
- But in the times of turmoil and despair, some faithful Alliance soldiers are planning for a return to the glorious Alliance…
Thandor is a 3D RTS game where you build units and battle other factions for control of resources (to build more units).

January 5 – 2004 – Sonic Battle – Game Boy Advance (North America)

Sonic Battle is a fast paced pseudo-fighting game, akin to Super Smash Brothers from Nintendo.
- Rather than being 3D side-scrolling, this game employs a 3D isometric view- not a static, sprite-based field though, it is comprised of actual texture-mapped polygons.
- The character sprites are 2D though, and while you think it wouldn’t work- it does 😛
You can have 9 characters to choose from, 5 modes of play; Story, Battle, Challenge, Training, and Mini Games; you can link up 4 GBA’s to fight your friends, each character has a bunch of moves you can use to beat the you-know-what out of whoever you’re fighting.
- It has a system of selecting Aerial, Ground, and Guard based attacks, and depending on what type of attack you set for which area (aerial/ground/guard), you have a possibility of 9 total different special attacks to choose from (only 3 at a time in a match though) which you can change each time you lose 1 stock point.
Among the other many features, Sonic Team has also made the game more dynamic with the addition of a trainable character whose abilities and techniques you can raise and add to.
- You get to pick and choose every aspect of the robot’s style (running, attacking, jumping, dashing, etc etc etc etc etc).
The game takes a moderate amount of time to play through as all the characters, and adds a longer lifespan to itself if you wish to play through and beat it completely (all characters, get all moves for the trainable robot, etc).

January 6 – 2010 – Born Into Darkness – Mac, Windows

Nathaniel Black joins the vampire Amber Blythe on a treasure hunt around the world, where they must follow the clues left on artifacts and ancient tombs to retrieve the lost Shroud of Lazarus.
Born Into Darkness is a hidden object game with adventure elements, where the main objective is to find all pieces of inventory items, to assemble and use them later.
- The interface tray at the bottom shows the silhouettes of the required objects whose parts are scattered around the location.
- As in most point-and-click titles, the player moves between scenes by clicking on obvious exit hotspots like doors and other openings.
- The silhouettes can be selected to show the all the parts necessary to complete the object.
- Once assembled, the item can be dragged and dropped from the inventory to a logical portion of the scenery to solve puzzles or perform certain actions.
The inventory is framed by blue and red hint jewels and medallions for each main character.
- There are slots for six jewels that highlight the position of one of the required parts when activated, showing only pieces for silhouettes that match their colors.
- Extra hints can be earned by selecting one of the medallions to play a mini-game.
- On Nathaniel’s mini-game, the goal is to find and click on the words listed at the top of the medallion on a pile of juxtaposed text at the center.
- On Amber’s mini-game, the player has to click on the flying ghost whose portrait appears on slots at the side of the medallion.

January 7 – 1998 – Sentry – Windows

Sentry is a freeware remake of Geoff Crammond’s all-time classic, The Sentinel.
- Gameplay remains true to the original, in this battle for dominance via height.
- Climb higher by building towers of boulders, gain energy by absorbing natural resources and teleport around the strange checkered landscape via robot shells.
- Meanwhile, you must avoid the deadly gaze of The Sentinel, who looks out from the highest peak.
- Get higher than him, then absorb him and take his place as ruler.
This Windows version includes texture mapping, dynamic lighting, music, an infinite supply of levels and a host of options.
- There are even two different stereoscopic modes.

January 8 – 2016 – Punch Club – Linux, Mac, Windows

Punch Club is a sporting management simulation in which the player manages an upcoming boxer in training and preparation for a series of boxing matches at a local club, while searching for clues of who killed their father.
- The game was developed as a humorous take on action films of the 1980s and 1990s.
The player controls an unnamed boxer whose father, who helped to train him, was murdered.
- The boxer aims to continue his training and become the best boxer at a local league, while following clues to lead him to who killed his father.
- The player manages the boxer around the clock through various locations in a city, including his home, the boxing gym, stores, and his work place.
- Time progresses when the player is involved in any activity, including moving between these locations.

Tidbits

Apple launched their “Privacy Nutrition Labels” on the App Store, giving you a full breakdown of what information they’re collecting when you use the app
- If you want a wake-up call just head over to Facebook’s or Instagram’s listing and scroll through the plethora of info they’re harvesting
It begins again- Samsung is deleting posts mocking Apple about not including USB wall adaptors with new iPhones amid plans to do the very same with their Galaxy S21
- Xiaomi is in the exact same situation too, releasing ads for their Mi10 phone highlighting the included power adaptor and now removing it from the Mi11 citing the environment
Adobe Flash is officially dead, with support having ended on December 31st
- But that which is dead may never die, and you can still see Peanut Butter Jelly Time over at the Internet Archive thanks to emulators
Watch Death to 2020 on Netflix
- Hilarious mockumentary about the year we all just got through, with some great actors and excellent writing

A Smart Bird Feeder

Link

Bird Buddy is a Wifi enabled bird feeder
- Notifies you on bird visitors
- Takes their photo
- And organizes it into a collection which is easy to share
- It will also track the species and catalog it in a collection for you
What features make it a Smart Feeder
- There is a front facing camera, that is equipped with AI that can recognize over a 1000 bird species
- The built in microphone will also identify birds by song as they approach or pass by.
- The mobile app lets you access these features as well, wherever you are
The module is detachable and upgrade-able from the bird feeder itself.
Very much funded
- A goal of 50,000 euro
- At time of note taking, over 3 million euro
Add on’s:
- Solar Roof
- Wall Mount
- Fence mount
- Suet Ball holder
You are also helping bird conservation
- Tracking info on bird species will help with migratory patterns and data will be accessible by experts
- Every feeder also includes a guide to bird feeding

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PS2J 327 News – RemindMe! 2191 Days

November 27, 2020
Tagged as: action, Adventure, Alan, Amazing Frog, android, Ape Escape, Apple, Arcade, battle royale, Bayonetta, Bizarre, bleed 2, bugsnax, bullet hell, bumbling, chome, click, Command and Conquer, compass, dance, dark cloud, detective, DOS, double fine, Dreamcast. Sonic, Driving, dumpster fire, email, Epic Games, epilogue, episodic, eshop, expansion, Extreme, file, Free Games, gat out of hell, Genesis, go sms pro, Google, grappling hook, hey.comdesert bus, hey.science, Indie, intel, jewel, JoJo, Josh, Just Cause 4, Link, m1, Mac, map, matryoshka, Micheal Jackson, Microsoft, miles morales, MJ, mud, mudrunner, mystery, N64, nintendo, noir, Ocarina of Time, off-road, One, online rocket, open-world, photo, platformer, Playstation, point, pokemon snap, Police, Privacy, ps plus collection, PS4, ps5, puzzle, quake, Red Alert, Reddit, remastered, Rico, rocket arena, rocket booster, russian, saints row, save, security, sequential, series, server, siberia, side scrolling, sim, Smash Bros, Sony, Spider-Man, stacking, stealth, super mario maker, superhuman, swiss, tails, techcrunch, the black hand, the raven, thief, twist, ultimate, universal, upload, url, viva pinata, VR, Wii, Windows, wingsuit, worms, worms rumble, XBox, Zelda

This is our second last episode of the year before we take our traditional December vacation, but we’ll be running feed drops through to the end of the year of some other great episodes from the Alberta Podcast Network. Hope you enjoy them, have a fantastic holiday season, and we’ll see you in January!

Free Games

Xbox
- The Raven Remastered
  - 2018 remaster from 2014
  - Episodic point and click adventure game incorporating elements of stealth and detective work, it’s a noir mystery story that has you playing a bumbling Swiss police constable on the hunt of a notorious jewel thief
- Bleed 2
  - 2017
  - Side-scrolling arcade action platformer featuring air-dodging, bullet-reflecting, and tons of bosses, like a 2D Bayonetta bullet-hell
- Saints Row: Gat out of Hell
  - 2015
  - Action-adventure open world game that serves as an epilogue to Saints Row IV and is a standalone expansion, featuring the same kind of over-the-top third-person shooter action and superhuman abilities that Saints Row became known for in later entries
- Stacking
  - 2011
  - Adventure puzzle game developed by Double Fine Productions, created during the development period of Brütal Legend, and based on the Russian stacking matryoshka dolls where you can stack and unstack into other characters to use their abilities and solve puzzles
PlayStation
- Worms Rumble
  - 2020
  - A twist on the classic Worms blueprint, where instead of turn-by-turn strategic combat it’s real-time with up to 32 players in battle royale or deathmatch modes
  - Launching simultaneously on the PS4, PS5, and Steam with full crossplay and planned ongoing content updates including arenas, customizations, game modes, and more
- Just Cause 4
  - 2018
  - Open world action adventure game where you work to take down The Black Hand, the world’s biggest private military, with your wingsuit, grappling hook, rocket boosters, and a variety of weaponry. The game uses a new version of the game engine of Just Cause 3, featuring diverse and extreme weather including blizzards, sandstorms, tornadoes, and more
- Rocket Arena
  - 2020
  - Online third-person 3v3 shooter where each character has unique abilities and signature rockets, and when you get blasted out of the arena you fly your rocket right back in to the action. Polygon called it a blend of Quake-style combat with Smash Bros violence
- Bugsnax (still free this month, too)
  - 2020
  - An indie adventure game where you explore a mysterious island and attempt to find and capture the titular half-bug-half-snack creatures, taking inspiration from Pokémon Snap, Ape Escape, Dark Cloud, and Viva Piñata
- And if you’re lucky enough to get a PS5, you’ll get access to the PS Plus Collection
  - 20 great games from the PS4 era that can help you catch up if you missed out
Epic Games
- MudRunner
  - 2017
  - Off-road driving sim that advertises itself as the ultimate off-road experience, putting players in the driver seat across extreme Siberian landscapes with only a map and compass as guides

Security alert: Go SMS Pro, a popular Android messaging app, exposed millions of users’ private photos and files

Security researchers found a flaw in the app back in August and contacted the developer with a 90-day deadline for a fix before they disclosed the issue, but after no communication back at all for the three month period they went public
Apparently when Go SMS Pro sends a photo, video, or other file to someone without the app, it gets uploaded to the app’s servers and lets the user share a web address, so that the recipient can see the file
Unfortunately the web addresses are sequential- any time a file is shared, a web address is generated that lets people browse through all the different files uploaded by other users
- Once you know the predictable web address, you can just edit the number and view anyone else’s files
And this problem is pretty widespread- Go SMS Pro has more than 100M installs, according to the Google Play Store
TechCrunch even verified the findings, viewing a person’s phone number, a bank transfer, an order confirmation, an arrest record, and many explicit photos
While it’s not possible to target a specific user, an attacker could create scripts to just grab anything and everything to filter through at a later date
In investigating the story TechCrunch emailed two different addresses associated with the app- one bounced back due to a full inbox, and the other opened the email but did not reply
This definitely isn’t what you want in a messaging app, so if you’re using Go SMS Pro you might want to consider an alternative

Updates have officially been released for Spider-Man on the PS4 and PS5 to allow game-saves to be brought in to the next-gen remaster

You’ll need to load up your PS4 copy first and upload your save from the main menu before you can import it on the PS5, so if you don’t have access to your old copy you might need to recruit a friend to help out
Luckily even though I already gave away my PS4 I could still boot up my old digital copy of Spider-Man to upload my save, ahead of buying Miles Morales

6 Years ago, the Apple subreddit thought of what a Phone in 2020 would be like

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2n9o7c/predict_the_iphone_in_2020

We browsed the comments for highlights live on the show

This Day In Gaming History

November 21 – 2014 – The Amazing Frog? – Linux, Mac, Ouya

Amazing Frog? is a Hardcore Parkour openworld buffet of bonkers physics sandbox gameplay.
- Welcome to the town of Swindon, UK. Home to flatulant super hero, Amazing Frog?
Enter Swindon where you can drive cars, buses and mobility scooters, jump on trampolines, fire yourself out of cannons, into explosions, search for trophies and Tvs and reach the heights and a whole lot more.
- Its your Swindon do as you please.
Take a quiet trip to the Swindon fArt Gallery if it pleases you….
- Feeling aggressive ? find a crossbow, machine gun or laser and shoot the hell out of each other.
- Visit the Fart Gyms for a workout or discover the Zombie filled underground Sewers.
Key Features:
- a 20Km Landscape
- A whole bunch of vehicles
- 4 player split screen
- Oculus VR support.
- Pigging backs… and pigs
- ridiculous ragdolls, trampolines, cannons and explosions
- Weapons like crossbows lasers and machine-guns
- Vicious Sharks
- Swimmming ish and Boats in the ocean
- Fully fitted Fart Gym
- Underground Zombie Frogs in the Sewers
- A Giant chessboard
- A bunch of test rooms
- and a whole lot of mystery…

November 22 – 1996 – Command & Conquer: Red Alert – Windows, DOS

What if Hitler never existed?
- Einstein pondered the question and created a time-machine to eliminate Hitler as a young man, thus preventing World War II as history remembers it. However, Einstein stopped one evil only to create another – because Stalin’s Soviet Union is now poised to conquer Europe… and Allies must stop them!
Josh says
- “This was one game I played a hell of a lot of, I remember making custom maps for my Dad to try out in the skirmish mode.”
The German version removes Hitler from the intro and replaces all the soldiers with cyborgs.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

November 23 – 1998 – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – N64

A game that needs no introduction, I have some trivia to talk about
- Ocarina of Time started life in development for Nintendo’s 64DD add-on for the Nintendo 64 (which was a disk drive that was only released in Japan with little fanfare).
  - The 64DD flopped in Japan and it wasn’t even released in the USA.
  - As a result, instead of being released in disks, the game was crammed into a cartridge (which was the biggest N64 pre-Expansion Pak cartridge released, in terms of space).
  - Even though it was originally developed and planned for the 64DD, it was announced to much surprise that Zelda would release in cartridge form for the N64 first; further indicating that the disk drive platform was not gaining the traction Nintendo had hoped for.
- Due to overwhelming fan requests, Nintendo decided to release the original production releases of the game as a gold-colored cartridge, restoring the ‘golden cartridge’ lineage that had previously been broken by the SNES version of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for Game Boy.
- There are at least three different versions of the game: 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2. The golden (limited edition) carts, as well as some gray carts, are all 1.0.
  - The majority of the ordinary gray carts are 1.1, and many of the later produced ones are 1.2.
  - The only notable change between 1.0 and 1.1 is that the Fire Temple music was changed a little bit.
    - It had a chant from an Islamic prayer looped in the background which offended some members of the Islamic community.
  - 1.1 also fixed some bugs, the most famous of them being the sword-losing bug.
    - In 1.0, if the player saves the game in the end battle after losing the Master Sword, and restart the game, they don’t have the sword anymore, but they can use all items while riding Epona.
    - Also the final boss originally had red blood which was changed to green in a later version.
- Link has always been left-handed, but it is particularly noticeable starting with this game. In the original title, this wasn’t always noticeable due to sprite-flipping techniques.
  - The reason for Link’s left-handedness is that his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, is also left-handed.
The N64 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

November 24 – 1992 – Sonic The Hedgehog 2 – Genesis

Widely regarded as the best classic Sonic games
- 10 Zones, most with 2 acts, you can play alone or with a friend
- Tail was introduced and made playable, the player can also select what combination of Sonic and Tails to play.
  - Unfortunately, I though it would be cute to have a big brother mode where the player is Tails being followed by Sonic.
When Sonic collects all seven Chaos Emeralds and transforms from a blue rodent into a fiery yellow powerhouse with insane speed.
- It may be a parody of Dragon Ball, the insanely popular flagship work of manga artist Akira Toriyama.
- The hero Goku is able to eventually transform into a “Super Saiyan”, a form in which he gains immense power along with spiky golden hair.
- The first Super Sayin appearance was in Dragon Ball 318, Also known as DBZ 124, which was released in Shonen Jump, March 26, 1991.
The Mega Drive version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

November 25 – 2000 – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – Dreamcast

This is a compilation of the arcade titles: JoJo’s Venture and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
- This game adapts Part 4 of the series, Stardust Crusaders.
- The game is a one-on-one fighter, similar in gameplay to most of Capcom’s other fighting games.
- In this game, however, you can call upon your Stand to access an entirely different set of normal attacks and gain additional defense and offensive bonuses.
- Your Stand’s power is not infinite, however – if you take enough damage, it’ll break, leaving you open to a devastating counter attack.
- Every character’s Stand has their own special powers which can be used to your advantage.
- Jojo’s Venture has less characters than Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has a special Challenge mode that lets you unlock playable characters when you complete it with certain characters.

November 26 – 2010 – Michael Jackson: The Experience – Wii

Michael Jackson: The Experience for the Wii is rhythm and dance game based on concepts previously introduced in Ubisoft’s Just Dance series.
- Unlike most dance games, Michael Jackson: The Experience does not require the Wii Balance Board or other peripherals.
- The game is played with a single Wii Remote which tracks the player as they try and perform the onscreen dance moves in-sync with the game.
- The Wii version features a training mode with video guides, four player multiplayer, and a Career mode that spans Jackson’s career from the 80’s onward.
- Each stage is inspired by the song’s music video and are created in 3D with live action dancers inserted.
This game released 17 months after the passing of Micheal Jackson

November 27 – 2017 – Desert Bus VR – Windows

Desert Bus is back and better than ever!
- The 1998 Penn and Teller cult hit mini-game is coming to virtual reality, so you can fully immerse yourself in the thrilling eight-hour trip from Arizona to Nevada.
- It’s almost like you’re driving the “wheel” thing!
- Desert Bus VR can also be played in standard digital reality if you don’t own a VR headset.
Features
- Put the Pedal to the Metal
  - Show everyone who rules the road as you take the wheel of a commercial passenger bus. With blistering speeds of up to 45mph and a prominent passenger side misalignment, only the hardest drivers can make it to Nevada and back!
- Getting Towed Has Never Been More Fun
  - Experience the realistic consequences of driving off the road with a tow service that takes you back to the start in real time!
- Play Non-Stop for Hours of Amusement
  - Enjoy the action-packed eight-hour road trip from Tuscon to Las Vegas. When you make it to Nevada, turn around and do it all again!
- Fill the Crushing, Oppressive Silence
  - Tune in to a variety of engaging radio programs, including one featuring the dulcet tones of Penn Jillette himself. You can even turn the radio on and off!
- Get the Authentic Bus Driving Experience
  - Learn what it’s like to be a REAL bus driver with exciting gameplay that allows you to honk the horn and open the bus door! Tap the fully-interactive air freshener for some hardcore, pine-scented* action!
  - *Purchase of air freshener required for full effect.
- Join Your Friends on This Road Trip
  - Play with up to four friends in Desert Bus VR’s groundbreaking new multiplayer mode. Passengers can sit, wave, and even throw wads of paper at the driver!
Desert Bus VR was made in-part to support Desert Bus for Hope, a volunteer organization that holds the eponymous annual event to raise money for game industry charity Child’s Play.
- Participants play Desert Bus in a telethon-style stream, with others pledging donations in exchange for incentives that can include everything from prizes to increasing the length of the Desert Bus play time.
Desert Bus VR does not appear in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die

Tidbits

If you’re a Chrome user moving to one of Apple’s new M1 Macs, you’ll want to get rid of your old copy and manually download the right version
- In a weird move they’re offering two different downloads- one that just works on Intel Macs, and another that works on both Intel and Apple processors
- The universal installer is a larger download, but with it running much faster on the M1 chip you’ll want to make sure you grab the correct one
Super Mario Maker 1 will officially be removed from the Nintendo eShop on January 12, 2021, and course uploads will be disabled as of March 31st
- Owners will be able to re-download the title after removal, and previously uploaded courses can still be played
If you need a little bit of email catharsis, check out hey.science/dumpster-fire where you can send an email to a literal physical dumpster fire
- Emails to dumpsterfire@hey.com will be printed off and carried into the flames via conveyor belt on a Twitch stream running 9am to 8pm Central

For more content, Patreon supports get access to upcoming ideas and more!

Thank you for your continued support Karen, we may not be podcasting today without your drive to make a podcasting community in Alberta. Listen to her and her daughter on Thats A Thing?!

And thanks to the rest of our ‘fanily’ that support us.

And if you want to support us too, its as easy as clicking this link!

We are a proud member of the Alberta Podcast Network. Locally grown. Community supported.

And talk to us in the comments!

PS2J 312 News – Domestic Spying Only

August 7, 2020
Tagged as: 1944, 3 our of 10, 5g, 60%, a legend reborn, absurd, abtracetogether, achievements, active noise cancelling, Actor, Adventure, air force one, Alan, Alpha Mission, android, Animal Crossing, animated, app store, Apple, Athena, ban, baseball, baseball stars 2, battery, Beast Busters, beat-em-up, Bermuda Triangle, Bethesda, bill gates, Bitcoin, blazing chrome, blood oxygen, bluetooth, book, brain, Breath of the Wild, brushing, buds live, Canada, China, Chopper I, chroma squad, Cloud, conole, contact tracing, covid alert, covid-19, cross-save, Crystalis, dead in vinland, Destiny 2, development, doom eternal, draconian, driver’s license, Elon Musk, Epic Games, episode 1, espn, europe, evil spirits, exile, exposure notification, fake reviews, Fantasy, federal agent, felony, fighting, forced sale, Free Games, friends, Galaxy, game studio, Gaming History, gear 5, general morden, global time, Google, Government, grouping, Guerrilla War, hack, health canada, historical, hunting and looting, iconic, Ikari Warriors, Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road, Ikari Warriors III: The Rescue, illegal, integration, iOS, iron clad, iron mask republic, ironclad, island, Isometric, Josh, kaiju, kickback, king of the monsters, kingdom of chop, mario kart 8, Mecha, metal slug 2, Microsoft, military, minecraft dungeons, minigame, monitor, Munch Mobile, Neo Geo, NES, neurovoider, New Horizons, new leaf, ninja art, north america, note 20, nuclear, ontario, organization, Ozma Wars, P.O.W.: Prisoners of War, Paddle Mania, playable sitcom, Playstation, Power Rangers, Prehistoric Isle, president, Privacy, project xcloud, propoganda, PS4, ps5, Psycho Soldier, puzle, rap, real estate, red moon, retroy, review, robot, RPG, run and gun, S.A.R. - Search and Rescue, s7+, Samsung, SASUKE vs COMMANDER, satire, scam, security, seeds, sengoku 3, shaq fu, shaquille o’neal, shock troopers, shock troopers 2nd squad, shoot ’em up, Shooter, side scrolling, slack, snk, snk 40th anniversary collection, social engineering, Sony, stadia, state plant regulatory official, Street Smart, studio, stunt, super monster, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, tab s7, teenagers, the elder scrolls online, threat, tiktok, Time Soldiers, TNK III, top-down, treachery in beatdown city, treasury, Trump, Turn Based, twin stick, Twitch, Twitter, ultra, ultra thin glass, united states, unlock, unpacked, Vanguard, Viking, warehouse, warsaw, warship, watch 3, welcome to shovelworks, wilmot’s warehouse, Windows, World Wars, Wrestling, XBone, XBox, xbox game pass ultimate, xbox game streaming, Xbox One, xbox series x, yakuza kiwami 2, z fold 2, z fold2 5g

Free Games

Twitch
- NeuroVoider
  - 2016
  - Twin-stick shooter RPG set in a futuristic world about brains shooting around evil robots with nuclear rocket launchers, where you can customize your brain with the smoking remains of your victims
- Dead in Vinland
  - 2018
  - Survival management game mixed with RPG and adventure elements, about a viking family trying to survive after being exiled on a mysterious island
- Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn
  - 2018
  - Fighting game featuring Shaquille O’Neal that has you fighting your way around the world, beating outlandish celebrity bosses, and listening to a new rap track from Shaq himself
- WARSAW
  - 2019
  - Turn-based historical role playing game where you need to use everything at your disposal to help a team of accidental heroes survive on the streets of Warsaw in 1944
- Treachery in Beatdown City
  - 2020
  - Retro-style beat ’em up with RPG tactics and wrestling mechanics that lets you build a custom character and go save the president
- Blazing Chrome
  - 2019
  - Side-scrolling action run and gun that has you freeing human kind from a machine-ruled world with fast-paced single player or co-op gameplay
- Chroma Squad
  - 2015
  - Turn based tactical RPG about five stunt actors who decide to quit their jobs and start their own Power Rangers inspired TV show, where you customize your studio, craft your giant cardboard mechas, and combine your heroes’ abilities with teamwork maneuvers
- Baseball Stars 2
  - 1992
  - Two player sports arcade game for the Neo-Geo that also saw a home release on the NES, it was lauded as having unparalleled gameplay and “the best graphics, sound, and gameplay this side of ESPN”
- Shock Troopers 2nd Squad
  - 1998
  - Top-down military themed action shooter arcade game on the Neo-Geo that actually has no connection to the first Shock Troopers game, you choose from four mercenaries with different abilities to take down a terrorist organization
- Ironclad
  - 1996
  - Side-scrolling shoot ’em up that has you manoeuvring a warship and teaming up with the mighty Iron Clad in order to fight the Iron Mask Republic and save the Kingdom of Chop
- King of the Monsters
  - 1990
  - Isometric fighting game that pits pits kaiju against eachother and humanity to discover who is the strongest Super Monster of all
- Sengoku 3
  - 2001
  - Side-scrolling beat ’em up that has you adventuring around the world to destroy evil spirits awoken by the red moon, with armed and unarmed combos and massive Ninja Art attacks
- Metal Slug 2
  - 1998
  - Iconic run and gun action shooting game where you fight your way through a hail of bullets to thwart General Morden’s evil ambitions and uncover the secret of his new coup
- SNK 40th Anniversary Collection
  - Video game compilation consisting of 24 different arcade and console games published by SNK between 1979 and 1990, from Ozma Wars to Crystalis
Epic Games
- Wilmot’s Warehouse
  - 2019
  - Top-down puzzle game about keeping a warehouse running in tip-top shape. You’ll need to flex your organizational muscles in arranging and grouping items so you can retrieve requests as quickly as possible
- 3 out of 10, Ep 1: Welcome To Shovelworks
  - 2020
  - Billed as the world’s first playable sitcom, it’s a fully animated and voiced free episodic series based in the world’s worst game studio, with narratively driven mini games taking you behind the scenes in a satirical look at game development

Health Canada has released a national COVID-19 contact tracing app, and it actually uses the proper exposure notification API

COVID Alert is available on iOS and Android, and takes full advantage of the Apple/Google Exposure Notification API
- One thing to note here is that because the API is only available in iOS 13, you’ll need an iPhone from the last five years or so (6s or newer)
- That lets your phone silently record randomized identifiers for anyone that comes within range of you for 15 minutes or more
- Then, if someone tests positive for COVID-19, they just have to enter a code given to them by health care workers and it will upload a list of everyone that was in range in the last 14 days
- At set intervals your phone will check the uploaded lists and, if your identifier was included in one, let you know that you may have been exposed
- No personal information is asked for or collected by the app- you’ll see a prompt asking to enable COVID-19 Exposure Logging and Notifications, and then another asking to enable notifications for the app. Other than that it just asks what province you live in
A lot of other apps, even some local ones like ABTraceTogether, have attempted something similar, but because they wanted to use their own systems they hit walls like your iPhone screen needing to be on and unlocked at all times
- These apps are not only battery hogs, but also less secure as they could be accessing other identifying information while they run
There is a caveat here in that reporting is currently limited to a pilot program running in Ontario, but you can still download and run the app anywhere in Canada so that your contact tracing records are kept up to date. Then even on day one of reporting in your province you’ll be able to see if you came into contact with someone days or weeks ago
Estimates show that these apps become really effective after they reach 60% of an area’s population, and there’s literally no downside to running it, so I’d heartily recommend everyone take a moment and get that going on your smartphone

Xbox Game Streaming is going full Stadia on September 15th, but they might actually do it right

Based on Project xCloud, the new tech will allow Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to play more than 100 games from the cloud on their Android devices
You’ll be able to play things like Minecraft Dungeons, Destiny 2, Gears 5, and Yakuza Kiwami 2, and they’ve announced they’ll be providing day-one access to new titles from Xbox Game Studios
Mobile users will have full access to the console experience, including friends lists, achievements, and saved game progress
And one of the best parts is that this isn’t limited to the States- September 15th will see the launch across 22 countries across North America and Europe
Unfortunately this is Android exclusive- Microsoft was running tests with iOS devices, but Apple’s App Store policies smacked the whole idea down
- An Apple spokesperson told Business Insider that streaming services like these can’t be on the App Store because the company can’t review every single game included in the apps
- They say that because games are interactive, unlike movies and music, they must be reviewed before being allowed to reach iPhone and iPad users
- I think if that’s their concern they should just put the highest age-rating on the app and let it loose. There are a lot of interactive things on iPhones, like web

Tag: side scrolling

Free Games

Twitch

Swimsanity – Couch Party Edition

Optica

Epic Games

The Fall

Sony Play at Home 2021

March 25

ABZU

Enter the Gungeon

Rez Infinite

Subnautica

The Witness

PSVR

Astro Bot Rescue Mission

Moss

Thumper

Paper Beast

April 19

Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition

A state-backed group in China wants to get around App Tracking Transparency and track app users with a controversial new “China Advertising ID”, or CAID

Sony’s unveiled the planned controller for their next generation of PSVR, and it looks pretty slick

This Week In Gaming History

March 13 – 2012 – Yakuza: Dead Souls – PlayStation 3 (United States)

March 14 – 1986 – Night Fire – DOS

March 15 – 1997 – Snowboard Kids – Nintendo 64 (North America)

March 16 – 2010 – Metro 2033 – Windows, Xbox 360

March 17 – 1995 – Descent – DOS

March 18 – 1992 – Minesweeper – Windows 3.x

March 19 – 2007 – Tetris Evolution – Xbox 360

Tidbits

For more content, Patreon supports get access to upcoming ideas and more!

Free Games

Epic Games

For The King

Metro: Last Light Redux

Twitch

Spinch

Stealth Bastard Deluxe

Monster Prom: Hotseat Edition

Swimsanity! – Couch Party Edition

Table Manners

Facebook has begun asking users to opt in to activity tracking ahead of Apple’s upcoming tracking transparency changes coming in iOS 14.5

Xiaomi has revealed true wireless charging technology with their ‘Mi Air Charge’, able to charge devices from across the room

Activision could be in some legal hot water after introducing a new character to their Call of Duty: Modern Warfare battlepass

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is coming on May 14th, with a lot of fanciness and lens flares

Destruction AllStars is showing off the dark side of the PS5’s fancy controller

This Week In Gaming History

January 30 – 2001 – SimCoaster – Windows

January 31 – 1999 – Silent Hill – PlayStation

February 1 – 1995 – Kirby’s Avalanche – SNES

February 2 – 2009 – 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness – Windows

February 3 – 2015 – Poké Doll Grabber – Browser

February 4 – 2000 – The Sims – Windows

Febuary 5 – 2008 – Devil May Cry 4 – PS3/XBox 360 (North America)

Tidbits

For more content, Patreon supports get access to upcoming ideas and more!

Free Games

The King of Fighters XIII

Facebook and Twitter finally locked Trump’s accounts this week after his disinformation and incitement led to a riot that breached the US capitol building

A couple of sizeable cyberattacks came to light involving software development and network management tools, impacting everyone using tools from Jetbrains and SolarWinds (including the US government)

Apple stealth-dropped the new AirPods Max, wireless over-ear headphones with all the bells and whistles including a premium price tag

US state and federal governments are suing Facebook in twin antitrust suits, looking to split up their monopoly over our digital lives including separating out Instagram and WhatsApp

Cyberpunk 2077 had a rough launch, leading to refunds and even being pulled from digital stores after running abysmally on previous-generation consoles

Facebook’s begun using full-page newspaper ads to slam Apple’s upcoming privacy measures, claiming they’re standing up for small businesses, titled “Apple vs the free internet”

Popular video conferencing app Zoom continues to be awful, now accused by the US Justice Department of suppressing calls about Tiananmen Square at China’s behest

These Weeks in Gaming History

December 8 – 1997 – Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor – Windows

December 9 – 1995 – WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness – DOS

December 10 – 2020 – Cyberpunk 2077 – PS4, Xbox One, Windows

December 11 – 2001 – Shadow Hearts – Playstation 2 North America

December 12 – 2000- Star Wars: Episode I – Obi-Wan’s Adventures – Game Boy Color

December 13 – 1996 – Sonic Blast – Game Gear (Japan)

December 14 – 2017 – Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory – PS4, PS Vita (Japan)

December 15 – 1992 – Batman Returns – DOS

December 16 – 2003 – The Sims: Bustin’ Out – GameCube, PS2, XBox

December 17 – 2002 – Super Bubble Pop – GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Xbox

December 18 – 1998 – Star Craft: Brood War – Windows

December 19 – 1994 – Blackthorne – DOS