In the olden days, mapping a dungeon meant breaking out a stack of graph paper and painstakingly documenting each 10×10′ block. This was true both for paper-and-pencil Dungeons and Dragons games and for early computer RPGs—today most computer games provide in-game maps that track your exploration progress, but back in the First Age you had […]
There must be a specialized term (hopefully a ten-syllable German one) to refer to this phenomenon of video gaming: You spend hours trying in vain to get past a difficult spot in a video game, dying and reloading countless times, and finally quit in frustration—swearing by the Implementors that the game is simply impossible and […]
I know it’s Valentine’s Day, but that doesn’t mean you have to have a Valentine’s Day sale: Spotted at Gamersgate. Those look like cool games, so by all means, go ahead; but if you find them romantic then maybe you should do some thinking. by
I like library used-book shops, because you never know what you’ll find in them. Usually they’re little more than a closet full of James Patterson novels selling for $.25 each. But the library shop in my parents’ hometown is a good one where my family has made many an unusual discovery over the years….
Linking without commentary to an Onion article is probably not a characteristic of brilliant blogging. But I enjoyed this Onion article too much not to do my part to spread it around the web: New Mike Tyson Documentary Features Exclusive Interviews With Super Macho Man, King Hippo. From the article: “Tyson was the toughest fighter […]
Here it is, the most frustrating Super Mario Bros. level ever. I can’t stop laughing–it’s sadistic level design at its best. Every time the player (who must have the patience of a saint) gets past one hurdle, he’s rewarded with sudden and unavoidable death from another angle. It actually reminds me of one of the […]
OK, maybe not the best games, but the most important games. A panel of game industry luminaries has put together a list of the ten most important games of all time. The games are: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), […]
Good and thorough thoughts on video games and real-life violence over at the Empires of Steel developer’s diary. (A week or two ago, I was privileged to discuss this very topic with Mr. EoS Developer over a cup of coffee.) He’s tracked down some statistics about murder and other violent crime rates since Doom and […]
I haven’t really been following Gears of War at all, except to occasionally notice that it looks pretty nifty. But I have to applaud this this GoW trailer, which juxtaposes the game’s bleak setting with the haunting version of “Mad World” I first heard on the Donnie Darko soundtrack. Classy. by
There are games that seem impossible to beat, and games that really are impossible to beat. That’s the story with the recent Bubble Bobble Revolution, which includes a game-halting bug. Apparently the big boss battle in Level 30 isn’t much of a battle at all because the boss never appears, meaning that the game just […]
