Still Playing Sunshine

 Most folks who play Pokémon at least know what a randomizer is, even if they haven't experienced one. The idea of mixing the game up so you never know what to expect has been around for a long while, and you can see it on YouTube and Twitch a lot.  It's similar to the self imposed Nuzlocke challenge in that the game's difficulty is increased by virtue of player made changes.  The question is, does randomizing the game make it more fun or not. The inherent challenge, and thus, the point of randomizers, comes from never knowing what you'll see and where.  Trainer Pokémon have been changed, Gym types have changed, and even starters have changed, so you might even run into a late game Legendary like Entei or Zekrom out on an early game route.  This idea of never knowing what you'll run into or need to have for the gym is where the excitement comes in because the game itself will act as if it's still what it used to be, but all your tactics will need to change to ac...

 Mods are a magical thing. They increase the lifespan of a game by almost uncountable measures.  We've talked here before about how there are different kinds of mods. from characters to voices, and this time, we've got customization!  Tekken 7  has a wide variety of mods, and today I thought we'd look at just 5 of them from across the different types.  Let's explore the crazy world of Tekken mods. Josie Becomes Tifa This mod changes quite a few things!  Josie's picture and name on the character select screen are replaced by Tifa, though you'll still need to go and customize her to look like Tifa.  Along with that, the announcer stops saying Josie's name, instead calling out Tifa's.  The mod goes farther than visual changes too, and Josie's voice, aside from a few places, so this is a wonderful mod to explore since it really affects thiings. Bob Becomes Big Smoke It's time to "follow the damn train" with this mod.  With a few customizati...

 Been a bit since my E3 article but we're back again with a topic I've been using to stream on Twitch!  Today, I'm going to talk about a little application called RomStation.  This isn't some fancy Playstationesque device, but rather a front to download games on for PC.  This includes games for almost all systems you can imagine too, from Gamecube to Saturn to even arcade.  Past just the regular games you can find on here are a special type of game that form the reason I wanted to talk about this- Romhacks! Romhacks are games that someone has messed with or changed in some minor or major way to change the experience for the player.  These can be things such as level design like in Kaizo Mario World  or just a simple character addition/ change like in Super Mario 3D World 64  or Goldeneye With Mario Characters .  These games can also change the story, move encounters around, and just be a completely new experience from the old one, so with tha...

 Another E3 is wrapping up as I write this and the new online formula was tested.  There was much to see despite Covid-19 limiting what developers had ready to show, and things ran the gamut from great to awful this year.  E3 is full of things for different gamers, and now it's time to look back at everything we've seen these last 4 days and sort out what fell where, starting with the more lackluster and moving upwards! The Worst: Ubisoft Forward: The Ubisoft presentation was pretty standard for them.  We got a new Rainbow Six  announcement with Rainbow Six Extraction , which sees players go up against an alien parasite foe.  Players found more Farcry 6  news as well as Blood Dragon  and a new thing that sees players take on the roles of Vaas and other villains.  We got a new dance game and some sports titles, but the highlight had to be the reveal of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope , which gave us a glimpse into the more free moving gameplay...

 E3 2021 approaches fast, and since large gatherings are still out of the question, the event has become the "Electronic Entertainment Experience", going all online for the first time ever (2020 was canceled).  While many talk about what they hope to see and what series deserve a new entry, a different thought occurred to me.  Being all online is definitely convenient for more people, but given how much gets announced and shown off at the event by so many companies,  can everything be done like this well? The usual spectacle of E3 is a big draw.  So many industry big names showing off what they have planned to large crowds.  The reactions and the in person reveals make up so much of what makes E3 fun, so having pre-recorded or even live recordings of it will never be able to hit the same way as being in person would. While companies like Nintendo and Sony had already begun their shift to video presentations a few years ago, others like Bethesda and Microsof...

 I did say last time that I'd end up talking about mods a lot, and here we are again.  This time, rather than talking about custom boards, we're talking about Resident Evil 3 .  Specifically, I'm going to talk about some of the fun ways you can change up the game with various character mods!  There's simply too many for me to go over every one, but I'll try to cover a decent amount here. Most of these will be character mods that change the appearance of Jill, Carlos, or others around, but there are other kinds out there too.  I said last time that mods really bring out the creativity in folks, and it's not a different case here, so let's dive on into some Resident Evil 3  mods. Aerith Gainsborough This is a character mod for Jill Valentine.  None of the dialogue will be affected but Jill's model will change.  Using Final Fantasy VII Remake  as a base, this mod  brings Aerith into the world of zombies.  This mod goes further than jus...

 It's time to talk about something that I've delved deep into over the last few years and even gotten a few articles published on: Mods!  There's a surprisingly large amount of them, whether it's on the internet or the Steam Workshop, and they come in so many varieties.  There's character mods, level mods, and depending on the game, even game mode mods. One type of these I recently discovered was Custom Mario Party boards, where folks create all new experiences in place of the standard boards. When I discovered these only a month ago, I knew I had hit something great to talk about. There's a surprising variety of them for all three original N64 games in the series, and there's 2 ways to even get them in.  These can be made to work on the regular N64 hardware, but since this is a more technical and difficult, the easiest method to use is the Project64 Emulator. But this article is less about that part, though the knowledge of how it all works was necessary...