A Boston-area Craigslist user posted an offer to give away a Ms. Pac Man cabinet for free. After being contacted by a member of ArcadeControls.com who asked why on earth he’d be giving such a thing away without any compensation, the man replied that unfortunately the cabinet was haunted and he just needed to get it out of his house.
It’s not brilliant, but I find Crossword a good diversion now and again. No clues are given - you just fill in letters where you think they fit. It passes five minutes or so.
Absolutely bonkers Japanese slapping game with an unusual vein of domestic melodrama. Enjoy.
Direct link:
http://nigoro.jp/game/rosecamellia/rosecamellia.php
I always seem to quite like games written by students, as what they lack in spit and polish is generally made up for by innovative gameplay. Polarity typifies this trend, being a nice little magnetism-based platformer that isn’t amazingly challenging, but passes the time in a pleasant enough way. It probably won’t last more than 20 minutes or so, but that’s what you want on a friday isn’t it?
Direct download link: (Windows only)
http://polarity.en.softonic.com/download
It’s been a few years since I read Stephen Poole’s interesting (if a little pretentious) book about videogames, but given that he’s now giving it away as an e-book, it seems churlish not to mention Trigger Happy
Decided to start posting details of a game every weekend in an attempt to up my blogging ratio. First up is the sublime Japanese shoot-em-up Gunroar, which manages to flood the screen with more enemy bullets than any other game I’ve ever seen. Survival becomes a sort of art of twitch zen and it’s easy to become mesmerized by the whole thing. This is due in no small part to the graphics, which to me are exactly what I thought games would look like in the 21st century, back when I was playing on my Amstrad CPC in the mid 80s.
While we’re on the subject of video games, does anyone else think that the voice in Bejewelled 2 sounds like the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs? There’s something about the way he says “Good…” when you clear five gems or more that makes me want to tuck my genitals between my legs and listen to Goodbye Horses. Or is it just me?
My latest waste of time is the massively multiplayer online game Urban Dead. It’s a primitive, browser-based game which pitches humans against zombies in the fictional town of Malton. While the gameplay is pretty primitive, what’s interested me about Urban Dead is the devotion of the players. The website features fully-featured Wiki documentation and various clans have formed, all of which are chronicled in extensive detail on various websites.
In a weird example of synchronicity, I discovered an article on the London Review of Books website by Thomas Jones that features Urban Dead quite extensively. Given that I used to work at the LRB and know Jones quite well, it’s almost enough to make you believe that there’s some sort of guiding force behind it all.
Or not.
Anyway, if anyone gets into Urban Dead and finds themselves bitten by a zombie called macguffin, it’s me. Mrrgh…
