Traygon

Played Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega MegaDrive? Of course you have! I bet you also loved the music, especially tracks such as the Flying Battery Zone! How would you like it for the music to be remixed and then released for free? Don’t believe me right? Well check out the following videos and follow the links to the download!

This first video is the remix to the Sonic 3 – Act 2 Boss. It is a fantastic track due to it sounding like a real mix that a signed DJ has created. Enjoy!

The second remix is of Sonic 3 & Knuckles – Act 1 Mini Boss. This is a very popular, loved track from the Sonic saga and is a truly epic remix.

Read more...

Many, many RuneScape players have been in at least one clan in the online world of our fantasy life stealing game. However, how many of us have actually considered running a clan of our own? No, I’m not on about a cheap, ill-mannered, ill-planned attempt at creating a solid base and abandoning the project after a few days. I’m thinking more of the lines as to having a very popular thread on the official forums, a website for your clan, around 15 people online in a VoIP at any given time, an event per day that churns up many dedicated players to ensure everyone has a ‘whale of a time’ (man I love that saying!) and to have many clan-to-clan wars.

Basic Understanding Of Clans

To begin, you need to grasp what a gaming clan actually is, what it involves, how it is created (and managed), what happens day to day and how to recruit members. Online gaming guilds/clans/communities (which ever you prefer to choose, RuneScape normally go with clans) started with gaming over the Internet, it wasn’t introduced in RuneScape, nor is it part of the game itself. The main idea for these uprising gangs of people at keyboards was to come together to enhance their enjoyment and experience of that covered game, while participating in events, going all out against other erected clans and create a name for each other.

That being said, the same principle and reasons behind today’s RuneScape clans are exactly the same. Let’s start this off at a nice, steady pace with a few points to consider:

• Time: You need to make sure you have enough time on your hands to dedicate to your clan, also consider time zones.
• Communication: What will your clan use to communicate? The in-game Clan Chat is almost useless, possible VoIP solution?
• Hierarchy: Careful consideration is required in deciding how your clan ranks will be structured.
• Members: You need to have an application, requirements, maybe even a trial to ensure all your recruits are the best.
• Events: What will you guys do? Clan events will need to be organized to daily, weekly and monthly occurrences.
• Location: Where will your home be? You may need to consider a website, meeting place in-game and other geographic possibilities.

RuneScape itself doesn’t have the best clan features available, but they are in the process of fixing this. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I really do think there needs to be greater clan management, maybe even built in VoIP functionality and other basic features that other games already implement (which is a big downside of RuneScape in my opinion). However, there are many events that your clan can do once created, these can include the following:

• Castle Wars
• Clan Wars
• Revenant Hunting
• King Black Dragon Slaying
• Barbarian Assault
• Pest Control
• PvP/Bounty Hunter
• House Party
• Skill Grinding
• TzHaar Fight Pit
• Kalphite Queen Hunting

Planning

First step on your clan creating journey is to figure out what on Earth you are going to do! This huge task isn’t one to go rushing into, nor is it to start right away without thinking about the sacrifices you will be making: for example, you will have a lot less time for your own needs, you really do need to have a steady income of gold. You need to strongly consider the serious time dedicated your clan will need. To begin planning, have a look around my blog, some other RuneScape blogs, help sites, fan sites and maybe some articles on clans to really get a good, solid background on RuneScape clans themselves.

With this powerful (hopefully) bank of knowledge, you will now be able to fully plan your future excellent clan. To begin with,

Read more...

You got to love this service as a gamer. Recording how many hours of your life you have wasted, showing that off to other people on the Internet and meeting like-minded players playing your games. I used to use it 24/7, well almost, when I was a hardcore Unreal Tournament player. In the clan >BIG< and many clans after that, I must have been playing around 6-7 hours a day, blowing the crap out of other online players or bots (aka. controlled NPC’s).

Now with more time being used up in real life, I only have limited time per day to get on my PC and play some games, which is a shame sometimes as the old days of having say 30 people in TeamSpeak (VoIP software) all on your team in a clan war is quite an awesome experience. Really starting to get back into Knights of the Old Republic 2 by Obsidian, not many people were satisfied with this title after the superior RPG release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, but I like it a lot.

Although I have had RuneScape being played in the past months, it hasn’t been my real goal to play. Espcecially as when I was really getting back into the swing of things, killing everything I see, finally getting a whip and seeing my skills starting to look less ‘noobish’, kids starting annoying me. I’m on about the most annoying, selfish, rude kids you could ever dream of finding in an MMORPG (maybe not as bad as World of Warcraft). I thought “I deserve more than this when pouring hours of my life into my avatar.”, so back to single player games I go.

We shall see what happens in the near month or two, with my blog being finally updated almost daily (always been my fault ) and some interesting things happening soon in the gaming world (such as the upcoming release of TeamSpeak 3!), I think it’s a damn good time to get back on that old, rusty gaming PC of yours.

Read more...

Having created your forum with a perfect idea, using the best design, posted a few threads inside your fantastically structured forums and setting up rules etc. there is one thing your missing. Advertising.

Why Advertise?

You might ask yourself this before and during the forum promotion process. “Why should I spend hours advertising my forum, using services and optimizing practices?”, I think it is useful as you can remind yourself of the task list that you need run through.

With the different, non exciting (I’m afraid so, but the results are more than satisfying!), processes in which you get your forum’s brand out there and gain traffic, you really do learn an awful lot about Administration & how the Internet works. You need to note one thing – people search. The search engines are there for a reason, to be used to find relative information as to what the user is looking for. Your goal is to be at the top of relative searches that contain your niche.

One of many reasons to advertise is to receive traffic, it is most important to newer, smaller forums that aren’t able to stand on their own two legs just yet. Another good reason for advertising and forming partnerships with other web masters/forum owners is that you will find valuable relationships arise and are very good in exchanging both traffic and PR (Page Rank) juice to one another through the connections with good authority, that is of course if you are one of those folk that care so much about their PR.

Signatures

The basic and most effective way to advertise on other forums, why? Because they are on every single post you make, they are shown in your profile and you can even have a really well designed image to aid in the effectiveness of drawing potential visitors to your forum. Many people may not even create a signature, not even place a link in there until they have maybe 400 posts or so, what a waste of potential traffic.

You have 3 posts on this particular thread page, there have been 69 views so far – that equals to 60+ (depending on how many times you have viewed the thread) people seeing your signature 3 times, thus having a good chance on clicking through if they find something interesting.

As you can see, signatures can really make a difference in an effective forum advertising campaign on other boards. An even better result would be for posting good content on your competitor’s forum with your signature active to help gain the right, relative traffic that will benefit your own forum the most. All in all – use signatures!

Profile Links

Though not as effective and viewed enough to be considered anywhere near as worthy as your signature, your profile link can send a few visitors your way nonetheless. Being in your main profile, should people find you interesting and wish to see your previous posts etc., and in your side posting mini-profile (if enabled by Administrators) it can be useful to link to your forum just to be safe.

Read more...

For all you massive retro-RPG fans out there… no I’m not on about the good Playstation or Xbox titles, I’m going further back, 16-bit ring any bells? There may just be a fantastic solution finally coming to the iPhone! Actually, it’s already released and being updated but you catch my drift

Zenonia, being developed by Gamevil, is an action role playing game on the iPhone platform. The game allows for real-time combat and exploration,  boasting simply incredible in-house designed sprites, great music and an indepth storyline.

Still hasn’t caught your needy attention? Well chuck in the fact that it only costs $2.99 (at time of this post), contains 40+ hours of gameplay, 3 distinct classes with their own skill tree, good and evil alignment, day & night (including weather effects) and much more. So now what d’ya think?

The story of Zenonia is very simple and easy to understand, as it has been done a million times before. However, side quests, good and evil alignment plus other factors will keep you addicted, no problem. Here is the Synopsis from Wikipedia:

Zenonia’s protagonist is Regret, a young man whose origins are initially unknown. His primary mission in the game is to find the reason for the death of his father at the hands of a demon and subsequently a more powerful evil that is at work.

Your thinking the exact same I was upon reading reviews ‘WOW! I NEED TO TRY IT!’, well good news for us all! The fantastic, epic folk over at Gamevil have released a Lite version of the game that really does allow the player to get a feel of the game and decide if it’s worth the purchase. Can you possibly ask for any more? No, wait, don’t ask it, there’s no need – they are already working on future updates So, lets start with breaking down the game into a nice, edible review.

First Impressions

It deserves a big fat 10 for being only $2.99 with so much content (and potential). Upon purchase and installation, which only takes seconds (another bonus for the iPhone!), you are already at the main menu raring to get started on your mini adventure. The main screen looks impressive, with some effective animation, could do with some slides of maybe other backgrounds but that may come in future updates. On the menu in which you can control your settings, start a new game, continue your adventure or look at other games by Gamevil. The touch sensitivity on the buttons is perfect and everything is self explanatory. This is all boring stuff right? Got’cha! We want graphics, cute sprites and cool scenery!

I couldn’t resist, there is your first screen shot. The game has a very attractive appeal to most ages, depending on how much of an RPG fan you are, and has some humour present from the offset, which is clearly shown with the main character’s facial expression.

Read more...

A quick post about how I found a new friend on Friday just gone. It was early in the morning on the Aldagte to Uxbridge Metropolitan line when a pigeon boarded the train. At first commuters didn’t know whether to laugh, change carriage or just wonder why a bird would be on the tube. Without seconds to think, doors closed and the train began to depart from the station.

I did manage to capture an image (quickly, as the bird was too busy rushing to view the map on where to get off at it’s stop) and it can clearly show the pigeon behind the seat. I was amazed further when we reached Liverpool Street, first station down, when the pigeon walked off casually and flew away. Nature can indeed work in mysterious ways.

Read more...