I remember with crystal clarity when I realized I was making more money from this enterprise than I was at my full-time job. I quickly decided to expand and hired four guys in Singapore to play 24/7. I paid them unreasonably well for the time, almost 3x as much as they would for other re-sellers; this bought me loyalty, and in this enterprise, loyalty is everything."
How I Helped Destroy Star Wars Galaxies [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis
on Mar 7, 2012 -
165 comments
I catch a lot of flak over my description of the years 1974 to 1983 as the Golden Age of roleplaying games, much of it based on a misunderstanding of my original point, namely that, after this period, tabletop RPGs would never again command the same degree of broad cultural significance that they did during this time. A good illustration of my point is this odd product, from wargames publisher SPI: Dallas: The Television Role-Playing Game. Published in 1980, the same year as the company's more well known foray into roleplaying, DragonQuest, Dallas was designed by none other than James F. Dunnigan, famous as (among many things) the designer of the classic wargames Jutland and PanzerBlitz. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Feb 29, 2012 -
26 comments
Samurai meets Minesweeper! Defeat the Seven Daimyos and their Shogun, and restore peace to the land! As the Samurai, you will have to choose your battles carefully to overcome the enemies' forces... [more inside]
posted by smcg
on Feb 17, 2012 -
8 comments
Super Mario Bros. Crossover 2.0 is out! An expansion on the original game, which let you play as various NES characters transplanted into Super Mario Bros., but using the rules and abilities of those characters from their original games, version 2 offers more special abilities, more characters, and your choice of audiovisual "skins" based on four Mario games from the NES, SNES, and Gameboy, along with one based on
Demon Returns. There's even
instructions for playing with a gamepad!
For more information, see the
Super Mario Bros. Crossover Wiki or watch the exciting
Super Mario Bros. Crossover trailer! [
Previously]
posted by Pope Guilty
on Feb 12, 2012 -
15 comments
Diplomacy isn't everyone's idea of fun. Time is one obstacle; a quick game can take six hours, and others can go on for 16 hours. More important, most of the action unfolds away from the table, in tense, furtive conversations among the seven players representing the once-great powers of Europe as they trade intelligence and plan joint maneuvers. The back-and-forth sounds like a David Mamet screenplay about the Triple Entente, especially because no promise is binding, no piece of information reliable. According to the rules (3 MB PDF), "players may say anything they wish." Eavesdropping, slander and betrayal -- back-stabbing, in Diplomacy parlance -- become arrows in your quiver, not the concealed weaponry of cheats and spoilsports.
posted by Trurl
on Jan 30, 2012 -
111 comments
Photographs of the Prison Chess series were taken in 2008 and 2009 in a maximum security facility of the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Jan 27, 2012 -
18 comments
William and Sly 2 is a gorgeous, ethereal fantasy exploration game wherein you play a nimble fox tasked with finding the scattered pages of your human friend's journal, while gathering mushrooms, finding keys to unlock mystery boxes, and freeing rune-bound spirits and pixies trapped in frost along the way.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Jan 16, 2012 -
14 comments
If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the
Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you.
[more inside]
posted by jedicus
on Jan 12, 2012 -
50 comments
Tinyhack :Tired of the graphical complexity of Nethack? Yearn for a game smaller than a favicon?
posted by leotrotsky
on Jan 2, 2012 -
33 comments
16-bit color schemes, in a classic retro VGA interface! New soundtracks and voiceovers! No typing required!
Infamous Adventures resurrects and lovingly remakes Sierra Games from the 1980's:
Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge and
Kings Quest III. SQ2 was released yesterday after more than five years in production, and comes complete with a
cheesy trailer. Available for download for PC and Mac, but be forewarned, the game is a total memory hog, and uses up a whole meg of RAM.
posted by zarq
on Dec 31, 2011 -
12 comments
??? WHAT IS KUSOGE ??? From the Japanese for "shit",
kuso, and "game." They're relentlessly terrible video games that in some cases have attracted a following because of their awfulness. Here are some of the most commonly recognized examples:
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 31, 2011 -
30 comments
Here is a video playthrough of The Legend of Zelda without a sword. It is possible to get right up to the last boss without one, although it requires knowing a
lot of tricks. That is exactly what mev1978 does in his playthrough, without dying. And then he does it again in the second quest.
First quest (1:61:31) -
Second quest (1:13:18)
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 26, 2011 -
33 comments
Flash Friday:
Gamerswithjobs calls Nekogames'
OUKA a "very minimalist experience, offering the simplest rules possible in a video game...(i)nstead of a long sentence or paragraph explaining things, or even a tutorial video, when you click the “Hint” button the game simply lays part of the level’s inner workings bare. It’s a testament to the simplicity of the game that this works so well."
Just click the symbol, that's all.
[more inside]
posted by mreleganza
on Dec 16, 2011 -
34 comments
