I had heard about Bastard Tetris or “Bastet” before and it sounded like it would be quite difficult. It’s just regular Tetris except that it uses a special algorithm to determine the absolute worst piece to drop. The preview pane shows you what piece you were probably hoping to get. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that made me so mad. It dropped about a dozen of the same S-shaped pieces on me and I almost lost because I had nowhere to put them. After playing the game for about an hour I decided that it wasn’t worth my time — though it definitely will sharpen your Tetris skills as you have to learn new patterns to place things. The usual setup for a tetris will NEVER work in this game, so you have to rely on just getting as many lines as possible. I got two lines at once and that was damn spectacular. I ran around the computer lab screaming “OH YEAH, TWO-LINE BONUS, BEESNIATCHES!!!”

A few years ago my dad bought me a 3D0 for Christmas. It was $99 at the time and the games were ridiculously cheap for the system. I am sure that I still have several dozen games for the system lying around at home in various boxes and CD holders. Many of the games came in packs of four, so you’d get four or five games for $10 or so. Not bad, eh? Well, obviously some of these games were stinkers but a few were pretty awesome. I bought one pack that came with a game I had been looking for ever since I heard of the 3D0: Way of the Warrior. This game was a serious middle finger up the asshole of anybody who was offended by the blood and guts spectacle of the Mortal Kombat games. Featuring a rocking soundtrack by White Zombie and graphics that were slightly better than MK, Way of the Warrior seemed to be the next big thing… except that it wasn’t. After beating the game, viewing a few disgusting finishing moves, one of which included the player being melted in lava and trying to crawl back out, I realized that the game wasn’t what I had hoped it would be. Looking at the other three discs left in the packages, which were mere accessories considering I had little interest in them initially, I decided to pop in “Star Control II.” I had never heard of the game and the graphics looked like something on a 386 — definitely not the full-motion video and blocky, pixelated 3D I expected from my 3D0. Hours later I decided that this was the real reason I bought the bundle of games. Star Control II had very little to offer in terms of eye candy, but it had everything in terms of characters and story. My buddies John and Chris joined me and we played this game for weeks in my basement. I don’t know how much actual time we spent on the game but I don’t think we ever finished it. A few years ago I had heard something about an open-source project that was aiming to re-do the game on modern computers. Well, the game is now available to download here. It looks just like I remembered.

One Switch Games

Take a look at some of the games on the site above. These games are all played with exactly one button on your keyboard. I know that it may sound stupid, but these games are actually a load of fun. I recommend you try out One Button Pitfall, Rollin’, and Jet Boarder. In addition to these one-button games, I also recommend you try the following:

Hamsterball
Gooball (Mac only)
Mount & Blade

I’ll post some more up later.

I think a more appropriate name for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas would be “Poor, Angry Black Man Simluator” or “Attack of the Honkies” — something to that effect. In my first few minutes with the game, these things happened:

1. I was arrested.
2. I was caught in a drive-by.
3. I purchased fried chicken.
4. I drove in a beat-up Cadillac.
5. I spray painted my gang sign all over town.
6. I was chased and attacked by rival gang members for painting said signs.
7. I was chased by the police for inciting the attack by said gang members.
8. I was arrested… again.
9. I appeared on Springer with my baby’s mama.
10. John Singleton approached me about making a movie about my life’s story.

Okay, not all of that happened, but you get the idea.

So I was playing Fable the other day and this guy suggested I donate money to the church. Doing so would supposedly get the God they worshipped to talk to me. While I’m not a religious person by any means, this sounded like a good idea. My character was a pretty nice guy and I figured it would be something he would do — a righteous cause, or so it seemed. After donating several thousand gold pieces, the acolyte in the temple informed me that my slight donation would be rewarded accordingly. So I waited. Nothing happened. WTF? No chatting with the big man? No cool glowing axes or other forms of awesome loot? I became upset because my money had simply disappeared and these goons thought I hadn’t bled enough for their damn church. Art imitates life I guess. I figured several thousand would be a decent donation, especially since it was almost all the gold I had on me. Apparently this one room church was in need of an expansion or these saps donated all their money away too. Using my remaining gold I found the nearest barber and got a mohawk. Then I found a tattoo artist and he tattooed a demon on my face. I returned to the temple and slaughtered the two budding Benny Hinns mercilessly. Of course, both of their last yelps were something like, “God will punish you for this act!!!” That’s really funny considering God was just about as active when the bastard took my damn money as he was when his own followers were murdered. Where’s your God now? I’ve made it my goal in the game to annihilate any and all religious people. When I am through the remaining sinners will be paying me tribute. And jerks.

Poor and lonely, I came across some villagers trying to remove a fairly large sword from the ground. These puny villagers laughed at me after I couldn’t remove the sword. After having a grand old time at my expense, they sent their best (please) man to try and best me at sword-pulling. This guy tried for about 15 seconds and then I cut him down where he stood. I then cut down all of his asshole friends who quickly stopped laughing at me. Bastards.

I have been frustrated at games before, but rarely am I frustrated with fictional characters in the games. I could have bought some really cool stuff with all that money, but no, the damn church took it from me and I had to resort to attempting to pull a sword from the ground. That didn’t turn out so well either.

If one expected Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith to suck, why would they still cough up the eight or nine bucks to go see it on opening day? Wouldn’t this be a waste of money, or is it cool to go spend money on a movie ticket just so you can bitch about how bad it is? I’ve got an even cooler idea. How about you take the money you were going to spend so you could whine about how George Lucas ruined Star Wars (a story, mind you, that HE created, not you) and give it to somebody who enjoys his movies. Make a donation below and shut the hell up.

The new Nintendo system looks really neat. The download system they are implementing for their older titles sounds like iTunes for video games. Very cool. I think Nintendo has been the underdog for nearly a decade, but they’re still holding on. Hopefully they will still be able to compete with Sony and Microsoft.

Guardians of Kelthas scored two awards last weekend at the IDEAS Festival this past weekend. One award was for “Best Game” while the other was for “Fan Favorite.” I also picked up two awards, one for my map of Kelthas and the other for a desktop I created for AS, which picked up an honorable mention in the games category.

I played a few of the Mega Man games back when I was a kid, and I sure as hell don’t remember them being so hard. The same goes for the Sonic the Hedgehog games. I beat Sonic 3 + Knuckles with all 14 emeralds in just a day or so, and now I’m nearing the end of the game and I only have 3 of the dang emeralds. I know I’m not the only person who feels this way. I went to the GameFAQs forums and there was a whole thread dedicated to aging gamers who just can’t hack it anymore. It’s so sad.

I thought I’d put a link up to a more thorough design doc for Detention Without Parole. You can check out the original page for it on the right or you can look at my more recent PDF version here.