If you’re into old school video games and pinball, the place to be in mid-July is at California Extreme, a classic arcade games show. Tickets are $60 for the weekend but the relevant pullquote here is:
Everything is on free play. You can play from the moment you arrive until we shut off the power at closing — Play as many games as you want, in whatever order you want to. There are *HUNDREDS* of games, all set to play for free. This is a your chance to try those older games, or the newer games that you’d never put money into in an arcade. There are also many games that never got produced, and are very hard to find.
I went with some friends several years ago and it was a lot of fun.
In this 28-minute presentation, Jesse Schell talks about the psychological and economic aspects of Facebook games and what that means for the future of gaming and living. If you make products or software that other people use, this is pretty much a must-see kinda thing…the last 5 or 6 minutes are dizzying, magical, and terrifying.
Stewart Butterfield and his ex-Flickr co-founders have revealed what their company, Tiny Speck, has been working on for the past few months: a game called Glitch. A CNET reporter has been embedded at Tiny Speck for the past few months and has more than you probably want to know about the new company and game.
I didn’t think much of this one at first (yet another tower defense game, right?) but the megatower wrinkle helps make Bubble Tanks Tower Defense almost unputdownable.
Oh, and there’s a level with unlimited money to spend on towers and upgrades to defend against unlimited enemies (it’s the last board in the top row). I built up the board as much as I could and let it run overnight. After 10 hours or so, the game got to level 2758 before all 20 lives were gone.
There is a certain paradigm shift that must occur when playing this game for the first time before the light goes on and the player ‘gets it’. I believe this is due to a sort of cognitive bias we have as gamers: when firing a turret we expect things to explode… and to go fast.
However, this game is anything but fast. The gameplay forces the player to slow down, think first, and to plan each shot carefully. Each game therefore becomes a careful placement of orbs rather than a quick-fire session to arrive at the end result. The slower pace gives way to excitement as an orb inches ever so close to that fearsome dotted line, and strategy emerges as the key ingredient to an award winning recipe. Those who don’t experience the paradigm shift may never appreciate the subtlety and the genius of this very simple gameplay design.
There’s also a version for the iPhone called Orbital.
I don’t have time for a proper play, but the sequel to Hedgehog Launch is out. It’s more of the same, only different. (thx, ben)
PS. In case you missed it on Friday, all the fun Flash games I post have their own page now: addictive Flash games. There it is, your whole day. Waiting to be ruined.
BTW, I’ve collected a bunch of the fun Flash games I post occasionally into a tag of their own: addictive Flash games. Hundreds of hours of fun, all on one page.
This Javascript Nintendo emulator works amazingly well in Google Chrome. You can play Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, etc.
I highly recommend you use Google Chrome to play JSNES. Thanks to its high performance canvas element, and a clever optimisation by Connor Dunn, it runs at full speed on modern computers. Mac builds are also available. Otherwise, it just about runs on Firefox 3.5 or Safari 4, but it’s hardly playable.
We’ve come a long way from the days of the 5K Awards.
A Life Well Wasted is a well-produced podcast about “video games and the people who love them”, sort of a gaming version of Radiolab or This American Life. Each episode is accompanied by a limited edition poster designed by the awesome Olly Moss.
This game has crummy graphics… UNTIL YOU UPGRADE THE GRAPHICS ENGINE! And no sound? UNTIL YOU BUY IT IN THE SHOP! And no mute button!? You guessed it, this game requires you to buy that as well!
Which seems a bit lame but then when you get into it a bit, it’s a little less lame but the game is totally easy and it just takes some time to get through it and get everything. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I finished it.
CycloManiacs is Excitebike all grown up…it can drink alcohol and tie cherry stems in knots with its tongue. Warning: this is literally hours of fun. Hours.
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