Hot and Sweet Indie Love

Ooooooh yeeeeeeaaaaaaaah (read it as if you were Isaac Hayes), sweet indie love. We know we don't appreciate you like we should baby, but we are sorry and we are trying to make it right. (Please cease that silly voice, you don't do it well anyway.)

Maybe it's the fact that Terraria is on sale today for $4.99 or maybe it's that I just haven't heard much about these games from other outlets, but I want to talk about some independent games. Over the next couple of days we are going to learn about some games that you should follow because I told you to. As a side note, if you haven't already purchased Terraria, you can't go wrong with $4.99 and if you already own it, do yourself, your friend, and your indie developer a favor and gift a copy. Earlier today is was $2.49, but apparently that was a mistake; a mistake that I took advantage of three times for my friends. It's $4.99, quit being so cheap and enjoy some indie goodness.

Let's not keep secrets, I am a PC elitist. I am proud of my rig and my community (for the most part... every body has its poop chute and so does every community), but when I was growing up I played a lot of consoles and I am not ashamed of that. My favorite RPG of all time is still Shining Force II; it's simple and led me to love the genre. I grew up on Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Commando. I fire up the Nintendo Entertainment System from time to time to reaffirm how incredible those games still are.

Many years have passed since I spent sleepless nights memorizing where every heart container was hidden in The Legend of Zelda and some of the people that grew up on these games have become game developers themselves. Super Meat Boy might as well be a love letter to the classic platforming games that Team Meat played in their youth. Another such game is Retro City Rampage.

If that trailer doesn't have you tapping your toes to the low fidelity music and replaying it to see what games were referenced, then you cannot be my friend. I can't even count how many references there are to games I love in that trailer alone.

Retro City Rampage is an open world homage to the NES. Think GTA in 8-bit and chock-full of games you obsessed over from the '80s. Originally started as an actual NES game 8 years ago interest started to spread and the developer (basically one guy) decided to make it on platforms that aren't powered by blowing into them. Although the website says for Wiiware and Xbox Arcade, I e-mailed the developer and confirmed that it will be coming to PC as well. CONFIRMED!

With news like Torchlight selling one-quadrabagillion copies, the indie market is not looking like a bad place to be. RCR, I wish you all the success in the world, but even more, I look forward to playing the hell out of your game.