Thank you Netflix for supplying us with complimentary access to review this series!

In 2015 I read, enjoyed, and reviewed the book Console Wars by Blake J. Harris. This book talks about how Sega recruited Tom Kalinske to become the CEO of Sega of America. At the time, Sega had superior hardware, but Nintendo had the majority of the market share. This episode recaps this book quite nicely and goes over Tom’s five pronged attack in an attempt to de-throne Nintendo.

The first step was to lower the price to $149 to make the Sega Genesis more competitive, and the next step was to defeat Mario. Sega needed a loveable mascot and it’s neat how this episode introduces Sonic’s designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. The Sonic series took off and attracted gamers around the world for a competition in 1994. Chris Tang, the world champion in Sega’s Rock the Rock contest is featured in this episode.

The third part of Tom Kalinske’s plan was to add more sports. Sega and EA worked together to bring John Madden’s football game to the console and it did really well. Because of the system’s limitations all of the players had the same (light) skin color. Gordan Bellamy, who is openly gay, is featured and takes credit for making the default skin color darker in the 1995 edition of Madden Football.

Thank you Netflix for supplying us with complimentary access to review this series!

Computer gaming began in the 70s with text-based role-playing games. There were no visuals and the user had to type in simple responses to play those games. Roberta Williams is interviewed in this episode and she was hooked on a text-based game called Colossal Cave Adventures that came out in 1976. The first computer game with graphics was her first foray into game design, Mystery House, which released in 1980. Roberta and her husband, Ken, founded Sierra Entertainment which produced many classic game series including Kings Quest, Police Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. Sierra also published the first Half-Life game in 1998.

Richard Garriott is also featured in this episode and he’s known for creating the popular Ultima games that are heavily inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. Until watching this series, I had no idea that he became an astronaut in 2008. Because of the success of the Ultima games, computer gaming took off and Richard Garriott was able to self-fund his flight to the international space station.

As role-playing games increased in popularity, a company called SquareSoft started their Final Fantasy series in 1987. Yoshitaka Amano is interviewed and it’s fascinating to see how his intricate art was pixelated and simplified for the hardware limitations of that time period. His artwork is unaltered on the game boxes and in the manuals.

Thank you Netflix for supplying us with complimentary access to review this series!

The main focus of the second episode is Nintendo. The company was founded in 1889 and their focus back then was playing cards. 1985’s launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) revitalized the video game market. Before sites like YouTube and GameFAQs, people relied on gameplay counselors to guide them through the thousands of NES games in the market. In this documentary, Shaun Bloom recalls his days as a gameplay counselor and what it took to become one. Getting paid to play videogames? Sounds like a dream job! With the growing video game library, it got harder to assist stuck gamers. Thankfully, the Nintendo Power magazine provided pointers and maps to ease the burden a little bit for the gameplay counselors and subscribers.

The 1984 lawsuit about Universal Studios suing Nintendo for the term “Kong” in Donkey Kong is discussed in detail by their lawyer, John Kirby. According to the credits, he passed away in 2019. After the case was won, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto paid homage to the lawyer by naming a popular character after him. Much of Nintendo’s success can be attributed to Shigeru Miyamoto, who played major roles in designing their most popular characters and games. Hirokazu Tanaka, the composer from Donkey Kong, is featured in this episode, and it’s neat to see how he came up with the various sound effects with the equipment he used back then.

The title of this episode, "Comeback Kid", is referring to the 1990 Nintendo World Champion, Jeff Hansen. When he originally tried to qualify, he got third place. His parents took him to the last contest where he took first place and eventually became the top player in his age group. The three games used in the competition were Super Mario Bros, Tetris, and Rad Racer. I wonder if his parents let him drive the Geo Metro he won for them when he turned 16?

Thank you Netflix for supplying us with complimentary access to review this series!

High Score is a new video game documentary series offered exclusively on Netflix. The first episode titled Boom & Bust opens with Howard Scott Warshaw who created E.T. for Atari in five weeks. That game is known as one of the worst in history and 728,000 copies of it were dumped into a landfill in New Mexico. Before that disaster, this documentary begins with Space Invaders which launched in 1978. A couple of funny tidbits learned from this series is that the developer, Tomohiro Nishikado, cannot get past level 2 in his own game. Another fun fact is that this title was so popular in Japan’s arcades that it caused a shortage of 100 yen coins.

In the West, Space Invaders was quite popular and there were tournaments hosted in the United States. Rebecca Heineman is interviewed recalling her memories of winning the first championship in 1980. When she won the tournament, she was a guy and her dead name is William.

Other games featured include Missile Command and Pac-Man. It’s funny how Pac-Man was aimed at female gamers. According to the developer, Toru Iwantani, his design came from a pizza missing one slice. Ms. Pac-Man was enhanced by a bunch of college drop-outs who Atari sued (and later hired) for altering Missile Command to be more profitable for arcade owners.

Thank you Wood Entertainment for sending us a screener to review!

Skateboarding has been around since the 1950s and its popularity has had its ups and downs. Skate parks would come and go and when they disappeared, underground and street skating took off. Pretending I’m A Superman – The Tony Hawk Video Game Story features many professional skaters like Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Chad Muska, and Eric Koston who share their experiences with this sport and various milestones before it became mainstream.

The popular Thrasher magazine started circulating in 1981, and the following year Tony Hawk became a pro skater. In 1986 Atari released 720°, a skateboarding game followed by California Games and Skate or Die in 1987. In 1989 the movie Gleaming the Cube was released. In the mid 90s skateboarding started to become popular and was showcased in the X Games, which was founded in 1994.

In 1997, Sega released a popular arcade game with a moving skateboard called Top Skater. Once Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater dropped in 1999, the sport would never be the same. Each new release would get better and when the fourth one came out, the other three were still in the top ten sales charts. Not only did this game revitalize the sport, but the skaters in the game became household names and the bands like Primus and Bad Religion got a whole new fan base. The inclusivity of minority and female skaters appealed to many people as well.

Thank you Citysports for sending us this massage gun to review!

After looking at the Amazon store page for this deep tissue massage gun, I wasn’t sure if I would be qualified to use it. The people in the pictures have chiseled muscles and six-packs that I’ll never achieve in this lifetime. I’m happy to wait for my glorified non-photoshopped body. Though I don’t workout to the point of injuring my muscles, I do consider myself fairly active and spend time outside walking and riding my bike on a regular basis. Thankfully, I haven’t injured myself working out. It’s sleeping in weird positions (to accommodate the 2 cats and 1 dog that sneak into our bed) that makes me sore. As fate would have it, I woke up with my left shoulder reminding me that I’m not getting any younger.

I’m glad I had the Citysports Massage Gun handy! The question is which tip do I use? This massage gun comes with six interchangeable tips that range in hardness and materials. Swapping them out is easy to do and only takes a couple of seconds. Most of them are a rubberized plastic, but a couple of them have a “Nerf-like” texture to them. For my shoulder soreness, I used the shovel-shaped head which is good for the whole body. The mushroom head is intended to be used on the back on either side of the spine. The flat head is designed for the hips, legs, and hands. The U-shaped head is meant to be used in soft parts of the body. The bullet head is intended for local and small muscle groups. To be on the safe side, stick with the softer ball-shaped head which is good for all around use and less likely to hurt as it’s the softest option. Some of the harder tips may hurt bones or cause bruises if you’re not careful.

Once you have the head picked out, your next goal is to determine which speed is right for you. There are twenty to choose from and they all feel good! As you push the massager gun into the sore muscles, the speed and angle may change automatically for you. While I was able to use this massager on my own, enlisting someone to point it on my back head on, felt great. Of course, I had to give them a back massage in return, but fair is fair.

Thank you Muhoop for sending us this bug zapper to review!

Though I can’t find any Biblical evidence, I believe that fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, and other blood sucking creatures are part of mankind’s curse in Genesis 3. I have yet to find someone who appreciates mosquitoes and wishes for them to stay alive. The “Electronical Mosquito Killer HK-1107” claims to be the best and has “achieved patent” according to the box.

This $20 mosquito killer is quite affordable and measures at 10” tall and 4.5” wide. The power cord is only 3 feet long and that’s my biggest complaint. There is no instruction manual, so I’m not sure how to open it up to clean away the bug bodies with a “soft lrush” as the box instructs. The box also recommends using this mosquito killer “in bed-room, hall, hostal, office, chicken farm, animal huslardry, and any other places where needs killing mosquitoes.“ As you can see, there were multiple typographical errors within the packaging, and it would have been a better experience had some of the instructions gone through a bit of proofreading before release.

We’ve been streaming games often but irregularly for a while. We’ve met the requirements for Twitch Affiliation and are blessed with over 1133 followers and 7 subscribers as I’m writing this. We really appreciate those who drop by and chat with us on our streams and support our ministry, Thank you!

For the past few months, I’ve been a member of a steaming site that promotes various streams and encourages their members to watch streams from their community. It’s a give and take system. By using this service our viewership and membership grew but the community wasn’t very active. Not many of the members of this site speak English so they couldn't understand what I was saying or read the game's dialogue.

Upon reaching the streaming hours and viewership numbers, I was given the opportunity to apply for Twitch partnership. While waiting for the approval process I was trying to stream when I could guarantee I could get the viewer count high enough to maintain the requirements.

Twitch did not approve our partnership application, and rightfully so. Our community is lacking and I want to focus on that moving forward instead of viewer count. Additionally, I would like to involve our Twitch followers in choosing what games we play and stream. If we get enough subscribers, I would like to be able to purchase and stream community selected AAA titles that are not sent to us to review.  Here's the link to out Twitch channel.

Thank you Penny Arcade for sending us some nice gaming gear!

Penny Arcade has been around for a while and I am most familiar with their comics. They also have a huge forum, games, shows, podcasts, and a cool shop! We were recently sent some swag that we did an unboxing for.

Their featured item is the Animal Crossing New Horizons pin set. This $30 set of four pins includes Tom Nook, his two pupils Timmy and Tommy, KK Slider, and Isabella. If you’re a fan of this popular series, these 1.5” tall pins are super cute and sure to brighten your day!

The canvas WASD tote bag is pretty spacious at 20” wide, 15” tall, and 5” deep. The fabric handles seem pretty sturdy, but I’ll have to do some grocery store testing when they allow us to use environmentally friendly bags again. There’s a zippered pouch or extra inventory slot on the inside of this tote bag.

At Christ Centered Gamer we get sent a lot of games to review and have an impressive backlog as a result. Some of them we ask for, but many games show up in our Inbox unexpectedly. We love working with indie developers to help them promote their otherwise overlooked labors of love. For the most part, we enjoy playing the games sent to us. According to our Steam Curator page the majority of our reviews are positive.

Every year, we release a Christmas Buying Guide, which highlights current games that are both fun and family-friendly. Quite frankly, this is not an easy task. It’s easy to find games that meet one criteria, but both takes some serious effort. Violence, language, sexual, and occult content are prevalent in many games. Those are usually the titles that get talked about the most at game shows. Other games can be played in front of children, your pastor, or grandparents without offending them. Sadly, those types of games are usually not very fun to begin with.

Before we implemented our dual score system, we used an average score which often propped up Christian and family-friendly games while overly chastising games that are Teen or Mature. While our current scoring system is not perfect, it does a pretty good job.

One of our recent reviews, Starclaw: Battle of StarSpace Nebula, scored well morally, but fell flat when it came down to the game/fun factor score. The developer did not take this review lightly and filed a copyright/slander case against us on Google. More on that later! As reviewers, we really do want to enjoy our time with games, but that’s not always the case. Even still, we try to find the positives and aim to offer constructive criticism for the developers to work with to improve their current and/or future games. If a game is patched, we’re willing to take another look at it to verify that the issues have been addressed and will add a blurb in the review. Per our Code of Ethics we will not remove negative reviews or alter them for financial gain.

Thank you Karen Campbell Media for sending us this book to review!

On the third day of creation, God created plants, trees, and kinds of vegetation. The Bible is full of references to various trees, plants, and flowers. In The Garden provides Biblical references, useful information, and beautiful water color illustrations to all of the plant life mentioned in the Bible.

This hard cover, 128-page book is broken down into four sections: Trees & Shrubs, Edible Plants, Medicinal & Aromatic Plants, and Flowers. There is also a guide on how to grow your own Biblically inspired garden, a calendar of Jewish growing seasons, an index of plants, and an index of scripture references.

In the tree section, I found it helpful that Noah’s Ark was made from acacia wood or shittim as it’s referred to in scripture. While it’s hard to pinpoint the exact plant used to make Jesus’ crown of thorns, the author suggests that it may have been made from Sarcopeterium spinosum, which was readily available in Rome and quite malleable.

Thank you Materia Collective for sending us this album to review!

My husband and I are fans of the Final Fantasy games and music. We have attended multiple live orchestral performances and own several Distant World and Black Mages/Earthbound Papas CDs. When I played and beat Final Fantasy VII on PC, I swapped out many of the original game songs to the Black Mages versions. By doing so, I made a great game even better! Before going any further, I must admit that I have not played the remake. With many gamers playing the remake and enjoying its music, it only makes sense to release an enhanced version of the soundtrack. Roborob delivers a nice selection of songs from this epic game in One Beat Angel FFVII.

I enjoyed and reviewed Roborob’s Kingdom Hearts remake album, Kingdom Heartbeats. I recognized many of the tracks but it’s been a while since I played a Kingdom Hearts game so I’m not as familiar with the music from that series. Since I’m a fan of Roborob and Final Fantasy VII, I jumped at the change to review One Beat Angel. For the most part, I have no regrets. While this is an enjoyable 11-track album, I prefer the original and Black Mages versions over this.

Just like the Final Fantasy games, this album opens up with a spruced-up version of the prelude song which is quite fitting. The second track Fight On! Takes the iconic battle song to a new level. If you’ve won a battle in a Final Fantasy game, you’ll recognize the Victory Fanfare song. The Mako Reactor song is instantly recognizable even with the dubstep additions. Who Are You is also given an electronic dance music facelift in this album. With the album called One Beat Angel, it should come as no surprise that One-Winged Angel is overhauled as well. Aerith’s theme is probably my least favorite song on this albumn since it’s not recognizable until the very end. On the flipside, the peppy Chocobo Theme doesn’t stray too far from the original score. On That Day Five Years Ago brings the seriousness back with some nice beats. Roborob’s rendition of Cosmo Canyon is decent, but I have to give the nod to Pandoh’s dubstep version. The finale song, JENOVA does not disappoint and brings this entertaining album to a close.

Thank you Materia Collective for sending this digital album to review!

Deltarune Chapter 1 is a free spiritual successor to Undertale. Toby Fox has worked his magic again by producing a fun game with good humor and an excellent soundtrack. In turn, String Player Gamer did an awesome job sprucing up the soundtrack in a fourteen-song collection called Field of Hopes and Strings which is a play on Deltarune’s theme song, Field of Hopes and Dreams. Both Fields of Hopes and Strings and the original soundtrack are available on BandCamp.com for $7 each.

Fields of Hopes and Strings is about forty minutes in length and has a nice sampling of songs from the OST which contains forty tracks. Many of the omitted songs are less than thirty seconds long. The symphonic metal styling of the chosen songs is superb and fans of Toby Fox and Deltarune should give this album a listen.

Here’s a breakdown of the track list:

Thank you Lionsgate for sending us a screener to review!

Oliver is a twelve-year-old genius whose parents are considering separating. To comfort him in these difficult times is his dog, Henry. Oliver also has a friend Xiao, in China, who plays online VR games with him. Xiao is also quite smart and is an accomplished hacker.

At this year’s science fair, Oliver shows off his mind-reading device. A fictional technology tycoon named Mr. Mills is in the audience and Oliver wants to make a good impression on him. Although the experiment didn’t go as planned, Mr. Mills (Kunal Nayyar) is impressed with Oliver's work and sees potential in it. At home, Oliver fine-tunes his project and with the help of a friend, hijacks a satellite to give the mind-reading device enough power. This move doesn’t go unnoticed by government officials. The project is a success and Oliver can hear his dog’s thoughts while wearing a special collar.

As it turns out, Henry is quite smart, talkative, and funny. Henry’s simple views on life are quite insightful and may help in repairing Oliver’s parents' marriage. There’s a school dance coming up and Oliver needs to work up the courage to ask his crush to the dance. The rest of Henry’s plans to rekindle Oliver’s parents’ romance revolves around them being at the school dance to hear their wedding song.

Thank you Canmixs for sending us this product to review!

I’ve been using a Garmin Vivofit 2 for the past few years. I like the step counting and prodding to get moving when I’ve been sitting still for too long. The Vivofit 2 also monitors my sleep, calorie burning, and menstrual cycle through the accompanying Android app. The Canmixs Smart Watch can do all of that and more for under $50.

The app is downloaded through a QR code in the instruction manual. For what it’s worth, my phone still scanned as virus free after installing this unsigned app. In order to unlock menstrual/ovulation cycle tracking, you’ll have to specify your gender as female in the app.

The build quality is nice and the soft rubber wrist straps are comfortable with plenty of size settings. I did find the metal clasp a little uncomfortable as it pressed into my wrist when typing. The 60g weight is noticeable, but not uncomfortable. The proprietary USB magnetic charging cable works nicely, I’m not sure how easy it will be to replace so I hope it doesn’t get damaged or lost.

Thank you Tripp Fuller for sending us a screener link to review!

The Road to Edmond was released in 2018, but now it’s available to watch on Amazon Prime for free. The movie begins with a young youth pastor named Cleo who is forced to take a 2-week sabbatical for telling one of his students that God loves her just as she is when she came out as gay. Cleo’s stance of acceptance goes against his church’s doctrine and that’s why he’s being reprimanded.

Not sure of what he did wrong, Cleo decides to clear his head by packing some camping gear and heading out on his vintage Schwinn bike without a particular destination in mind. On a rest stop, Cleo declines the advances of a lady, and later witnesses his bike getting ran over. The guy who ran over the bike is named Larry and he’s on a road trip with his father’s ashes. Without any better transportation options, Cleo decides to join along for the ride.

Please note that the rest of this post contains spoilers.

Larry is very talkative and tries to cheer up Cleo with crude humor and insightful questions. Having a religious background, Larry asks Cleo for his “Jesus Pitch” and it’s not very convincing. In fact, Cleo’s faith is shaky and on the road trip Larry gets him to swear, drink, and try marijuana. They even go to a gay wedding.

Many jobs and companies are being impacted by this pandemic. Lord knows how many businesses will be able to re-open after COVID-19! Though we have seen some drops in Patreon and donations, we’re still doing okay financially. Since many large audience venues are canceled, we don’t anticipate doing any more conventions this year. Considering that the church that supports us financially is under severe financial strain, we should brace for the possibility that we’ll be losing funding from them. We need to conserve our funds to cover website hosting, upcoming console releases, and paid reviews.

On a positive note, we have had more time to play games and have been chipping away at our enormous backlog! We have been doing lots of streams and have been adding videos to YouTube on a regular basis. Though we have been putting more work into the site, we don’t see much for it financially since we don’t have thousands/millions of subscribers. If you don’t follow us on YouTube yet, please consider doing so! As a 501 (c)(3) non-profit, we’re transparent about our finances - http://www.christcenteredgamer.org/2020-finances/.

We’re now Twitch affiliates which allows people to subscribe to and support our streams for $4.99/month. Did you know that there’s a way to subscribe to us on Twitch for free? If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you get many Twitch benefits for free including new games every month. Check out https://twitch.amazon.com/tp If you don’t have a Twitch account, you should get one!

If you’re an Amazon Prime and Twitch member, would you consider using your free Twitch Prime subscription to support our ministry? Just go to https://www.twitch.tv/christcenteredgamer and click on the purple Subscribe button that has a crown on it.

Thank you Lionsgate for sending us a digital screener to review!

I Still Believe is based on the true story of Jeremy Camp’s college days before he became a popular Christian artist who sold five million CDs. This film was supposed to be released in theaters on March 13, 2020, but those plans were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, Christians and fans of Jeremy Camp’s music can support this film by renting a premium video on demand on sites like Amazon for $19.99. The digital rentals are good for 48 hours.

This film has a star-studded cast including Gary Sinese and Shania Twain as Jeremy’s parents. Jeremy Camp is played by KJ Apa who does not lip-sync, but puts his own spin on the popular Christian hits sung throughout the movie. I must confess that I’m not familiar with Mr. Camp’s music (despite owning a CD!) so none of the songs performed in it sounded familiar to me. It’s really fascinating knowing the inspiration of two of his hit songs “I Still Believe”, and "Walk by Faith”.

The events in the movie are based loosely on Jeremy Camp’s written biography, I Still Believe. Some artistic liberties have been taken. In the film, the love triangle is between Michelle Henning, Jeremy Camp, and his musical mentor, Jean-Luc La Joie. In reality, the love triangle was with a friend from Jeremy’s Bible study instead.

Thank you Materia Collective for sending us this digital album to review!

The Pokémon franchise has been around since 1996 and has been producing best-selling games almost yearly since then. I started with the first generation of Red, Blue, and Yellow games. Ro Panuganti, who specializes in video game covers, takes tunes from the Red and Blue games and puts a heavy metal spin on them. The end result is a nine-track digital album that provides over twenty-five minutes of heart pumping music to catch Pokémon to!

It’s been years since I’ve played Pokémon Red/Blue, but I still recognized the first tune, Pokémon Master, right off the bat. It’s the theme song, electrified! The second track named Viridian is the Viridian City music overhauled. The guitar playing is fantastic! The third track, Wild Encounter, has some nice sound effects and really spruces up the wild Pokémon battle music. Pokémon Hospital begins with a lot of background noises including chatter and ER machinery before revealing a soothing remake of the Pokémon Center music. The Mt. Moon track is true to the source material and keeps the sense of danger and the thrill of exploration. The sixth track, Cerulean, takes the upbeat city music and jazzes it up a bit. I wonder how many people would recognize it if it was set as hold music?

The seventh track, Lavender, is the longest track at nearly five and a half minutes long. I must say I like this version much better than the original game’s town music. The mysterious mansion music is the eighth track dubbed Mansion. Again, this rendition improves upon the original in my opinion. The final track, Gym Battle, is a souped up version of the iconic Gym Battle music.

Thank you Paramount for sending us a digital screener to review!

There have been many movies adapted after popular video game franchises. Sadly, most of them are not very good. This film had a rocky start after fans heavily criticized Paramount’s original design of the blue blur. Sonic’s final appearance looks much closer to Sega’s design with the exception of his arms being blue instead of cream colored.

Sonic is voiced by Ben Schwartz and he does a great job with bringing out the attitude that gamers have grown to love. While Sonic is often cocky, there’s a lot of loneliness shown as he must remain hidden from humans while living on Earth. In the fictional town of Green Hills, Montana, Sonic watches many residents of this small community without being detected (for the most part).

When Sonic lets his emotions get the better of him, he causes a mass loss of power and the government calls upon Dr. Robotnik to discover the source. Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Eggman is quite funny and he provides a lot of humor in this film as expected.