September 2008

I recently came across a flash version of the board game Dark Tower, which was released in the early ’80s.  Wow, does that bring back the memories!  I also found this page which gives a great description of the game and has plenty of pictures.  It’s amazing how clearly I remember the artwork, events and gameplay.

I’m not sure if Dark Tower was truly a great game but it sure seemed super cool at the time.  The tower in the middle of the game was battery operated and had a computer which would remember your stats, tell you who won a fight and play sound effects and music.  That definitely seemed like the greatest thing ever.  What’s more, the game was set in a fun fantasy world.  Your hero would gather warriors, food and gold in order seek out the three keys needed to enter the Dark Tower.  There were fights with Brigands and items you could acquire such as the Dragonsword.

I learned from my Dark Tower browsing that the artist who did the amazing, memorable artwork for the game was Bob Pepper.  You can check out some of his incredible book covers on Flickr.  And who knew there was a famous court case involving the game?

If you remember the game and feel the same nostalgia, check out the flash version.  It really nails the old-school sound effects, from the creaking door as you enter a tomb or ruin to the clarion call as battle with the brigands is joined.  The Ancient Magic Scepter will be mine once again!

How many of you had a Rubik’s Cube as a kid? My household has had several over the years. I have mentioned before that I’ve never properly solved the colorful cube puzzle, but rumours have it that some “people” are simply not stumped by Rubik’s original hell-spawned creation.

Well, it looks like there’s a new puzzle in town that will be even more impossible for me to ever solve folks! As if the original cube was not devilish enough, they’ve come out with something called “Rubik’s Mirror Blocks”.

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If there’s a game in the Top 25 Free downloads at the App Store, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to download and try it.  That’s what happened with a game called Dactyl, from Mauvila Software.

Now, Dactyl is a complex game so it’s a bit hard to explain.  It’s a mentally demanding foray requiring deep strategy and advanced tactics.  Well, okay…not really.  The game works like this: touch the red bombs.  Yep, that’s pretty much it.  Well, I’ll expound on this.  You tap the start key and then a bomb will turn red.  You have to touch it to defuse it before the fuse blows.  Bombs continue to turn red quite rapidly and you keep touching them until one explodes because you were to slow.  You can then enter your initials onto a (currently local) high score list.  The only settings are whether or not you want to use the high score list and whether or not you would like to clear it.

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I came across an amazing Flickr photo set today by roguebantha_1138 that is titled “Rebel attack!“. This is an amazingly detailed diorama made from Lego depicting a large scale battle by rebels on an Imperial base and mining facility.

At first I was not sure if the images were digitally edited or not. I could see ships floating in the air. Upon examination of the pictures in a larger view, I realized he is just cleverly using transparent pieces to suspend them in the air. I was impressed with some of the smaller objects he created and how damned good they looked despite being built from just a small handful of pieces. There’s a shot of an X-Wing being shot down that I found to be impressively creative; it depicts a smoke trail as the fighter is careening to the ground.

Mr. bantha explains that this project of his has taken a year to build. Don’t just check out the photo set though, take the time to flip around his whole Flickr photo stream. There are some awesome snapshots of the diorama in-progress, as well as some other amazing Lego work.

It’s official, the Google Phone is here. The G1, filled to the brim with features, I guess!

I won’t go through an entire list of things, but rather just touch base. If you would like to take a look, you can read this article here.

The G1 has MMS support, as well as Copy and Paste support, two things that iPhone users may or may not have been griping about since the iPhone came on the market. The G1 also features a physical keyboard… but I’ve never had any problems with the on-screen keyboard on my iPhone (and I won’t believe anyone who says it is bad without them giving it an honest unbiased try).

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Wow, I’ve been writing so much about Katauri Interactive/Stardock games lately that I should probably say we have absolutely no relationship with either, financial or otherwise.  I just get on kicks sometime.

I mentioned that the game I took a break from playing to try the King’s Bounty demo was Space Rangers 2, also made by Katauri Interactive and (like Political Machine) available on Stardock’s Impulse platform.  As much as I love the King’s Bounty demo (the more I play it the more I love it), I was fired up to get back to my Space Rangers 2.  It’s not most original name for a game.  I realize that.  But it’s a heck of an original game, very different from anything else I’ve played lately. 

Space Rangers 2 was actually released a couple of years ago and I was really into it then.  But I completely forgot how much fun it is.  And now I have the sweet and tasty expansion to make it even more enjoyable. 

Hmm, but maybe I should describe the original game first.   It’s a sci-fi game focused on trading, ship-to-ship combat and exploration.  The storyline is simple enough: an alien race called the Dominators is trying to destroy all life in the universe.  But this is a decidedly open-ended game and it’s hard to describe because there are so many different ways to play.  I’ve read the experiences of other people and the way they played the game often differs.  Some are traders, some fight the Dominators, some are pirates.  Some people get really into the RTS portion and some never take those missions. 

After the jump I’ll discuss the following different games: A turn based strategy, an old-school arcade shoot-em-up, a real time strategy battle, a role-playing game,  a first person shooter, and some text adventures.

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