Games

Guinness World Records 2011 Gamer’s Edition

July 9, 2023 by noemi

So you think you’re the best Guitar Hero player ever born? Think again! You’ve seen all those YouTube videos about little kids kicking the butt of everyone else – never mind that we are twice or three times his age. If you want some “light reading” that is all about gaming, then Guinness has the perfect thing for you – the 2011 Gamer’s Edition. Just to give you an idea, here is an interview with the record holder for the highest scoring female Guitar Hero player. Hats off to you, Annie Leung.

It’s not all about “serious” records, though. In case you have ever wondered about all that swearing in video games, you can read up on that in this edition. Other pieces of trivia that you can start memorizing (to use as pick up lines, conversation starters, or whatever):

The oldest gamer included in the book is John Bates of Onalaska, Wisconsin. He is 85 years old, a former high school principal, and is a certified Wii Bowling addict. His feat? He has the highest number of perfect games on Wii Sports Bowling: 2,850.
Mitsugu Kikai from Tokyo is only 25 years old and has 5,400 items of Super Mario-related memorabilia. Does anyone out there have more? Let Guinness know!
Angry Birds is the Top Paid-For Apple App Store Game. But then again, we already know that, don’t we?

Find out how to get your hands on the book from the Guinness web site. If anything, it will be a good way to pass the time when you don’t have anything else to do.

A Whole New World of (Biotic) Games

July 7, 2023 by noemi

Just the other day, I had the chance to play World of Goo for the first time. Yes, I know that’s a really old game, but some of us have to work. 😉

Anyhow, the experience was a strange one as I didn’t immediately get the concept. Little blobs of black goo (sometimes white) bouncing around just didn’t tickle my fancy, so I didn’t really end up playing it for long. For those of you who are interested in this kind of gameplay – the weirder the better – then you will like these new “biotic” games.

A team in Stanford University led by Ingmar Riedel-Kruse have come up with a bunch of biotic games based on – surprise – biological processes. The main player is paramecia. Quick bio review: paramecium is a kind of unicellular ciliate protozoa. It moves – just like a caterpillar – because of the cilia covering it all over. Now do you see where this can go?

So the scientists had a lot of free time in their hands and decided to have some fun. The games they created are:
‘Enlightenment’, ‘Ciliaball’, ‘PAC-mecium’, ‘Microbash’, ‘Biotic Pinball’, ‘POND PONG’, ‘PolymerRace’, and ‘The Prisoner’s Smellemma’. I cannot even begin to imagine how these games will work, but here is a video that will aid your imagination in case you are in the same boat as I am.

Fancy a biotic game of Pac-Man or soccer? Maybe Ingmar and his team will play nice and let you have a go at their games. I think I will stick to my “traditional” games.

Santa Can’t Deliver Nintendo 3DS This Year

June 18, 2023 by noemi

Come on now, you’re not really surprised are you? After all, most – if not all – electronics manufacturers do experience delays every now and then. Sony and Microsoft are pretty much the same way – why not Nintendo?

Anyhow, news about the Nintendo 3Ds has been going around for a while now, which, of course, has excited many a Nintendo fan. The improved version of the Nintendo handheld gaming console promises a 3D experience to every gamer without having the neeed for 3D glasses. Now isn’t that something?

Unfortunately, Nintendo just announced that we are not going to see the new console by Christmas. This is, of course, a disappointment to the fans who have been dreaming of getting a new portable gaming device from Santa this year. On a more practical note, this move also means big losses for Nintendo. But who cares about their losses when you can’t have your wish for the holidays?

There’s not much that you can do about it, though, except to wait for March if you’re in the United Kingdom – and the rest of Europe. If you’re in Japan, then the wait is a bit shorter, as the console will be released by February. The reason for the delay?

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president says: “At first we thought it would be desirable to launch the 3DS within the year, so we made our forecasts on that basis. At this point it is clear that if we launch within the year, we will not be able to supply enough units.”

Whether or not it’s the real reason, you might want to save some of your Christmas money for February or March, whichever the case may be.

18 Undiscovered Websites Every Gamer Should Know

February 11, 2023 by Skellie

The gaming niche is characterized by its haves and have-nots. You’ve seen Kotaku, IGN, GameSpot, Joystiq, 1UP and the others, but what about the great, lesser-known gaming sites?

This post introduces 18 great gaming sites you might not have seen before. Whether you’re looking for freebies, music, laughs or oddities, there’s something here for occasional and hardcore gamers alike.

1. Overclocked Remix is a community hub of users who painstakingly remix and arrange video game music. There are thousands of tracks available for download. If you like the soundtrack to your favorite game, you can bet it has been remixed and reworked here.

2. The Freeware Indie Games Database offers just under 1,000 play-tested freeware titles from independent game developers. The games here are innovative and unique. Some of them are bound to be re-developed as Wii titles.

3. POKE is a light-weight utility that allows you to cheat in almost any single player game, whether it’s already published or to be published in the future.

4. The Daedalus Project gets into the minds of MMORPG players. The website’s author has surveyed over 35,000 gamers and provides a detailed break-down of his findings in areas such as the player life-cycle, making friends and status reversal. It’s fascinating stuff.

5. Gaming Magazines of the Pre-Internet Era is a treasure trove for retro gamers. It links out to .PDF databases of old and out of print gaming magazines.

6. The Grand List of Role Playing Game Clichés is a list of 100+ painful clichés any RPG fan would have encountered before. My favorite? The No! My beloved peasant village cliché: “The hero’s home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.”

7. GameCakes is the website for people who love cake and video games. These game-themed cakes run the gamut, from the bizarre to the majestic. The scrumptious photos will have you baking your own cupcakes in no time.

8. CrazyPC is the hardcore gamer’s place for computer accessories. All the neon, case mods, plexiglass, tubes and coolant fluid you can poke a memory stick at.

9. VGMusic is host to 24,000+ midi versions of video game tracks from all your retro favorites: Megaman, Mario, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, et al.

10. Build Your Own Gaming Computers is a website dedicated to helping you… well, you can probably guess. Gaming rigs sell for thousands of dollars and learning to build your own can save you lots of cash. This website provides advice on the entire process, from choosing parts to installation.

11. Abandonia offers thousands of abandonware DOS downloads. Abandonware essentially means games which aren’t sold anymore, prompting their release into the public domain. They’re the games you might have owned and loved as a child or teenager. Chances are you’ll find some old favorites here.

12. Jay is Games sources out the best casual games and brings them directly to you. The blog’s authors sure know their stuff and their opinions are worth listening to. Subscribe to their feed for a daily stream of gorgeous, idle distractions.

13. Old Grandma Hardcore is the blog of a foul-mouthed, lovable gamer grandma (with the pictures to prove it!). No, we’re not talking Brain Training and The Sims — we’re talking games like Bioshock and The Darkness. This grandma really is hardcore!

14. Insert Credit is a multi-author Japanese games and culture blog specializing in breaking news from the land of the rising sun.

15. Replacementdocs is an online archive of .PDF game manuals for thousands of popular games. If you’ve experienced the frustration of losing the manual to your favorite title, replacementdocs should have a solution for you.

16. Wonderland is an odds-and-ends gaming blog mainly known for its cool gamecrafts. From Darth Vader backpacks to Quake coasters, this blog is proof that gamers are an arty bunch.

17. The Speed Demos Archive is host to hundreds of videos documenting the efforts of those dedicated individuals who’ve conquered games in the shortest time possible. Watch epic games like Half Life 2 and Icewind Dale beaten before your lunch-break is over.

18. The System Requirements Lab analyzes your computer, benchmarking it against the minimum requirements of a specific product. Ever wondered if your computer can handle that gorgeous new release? Now you’ll know.

Update: Here are some more great websites that you might not have seen before, suggested from our readers:

Top 10 Places to Get Movie, Music and Game Reviews Online

February 9, 2023 by Skellie

We’ve all done it: paid hard-earned money for something in the hope it would be good, only to find out that it wasn’t worth the risk. Think of all the shopper’s remorse we could avoid if we read a few reviews before we bought something!

Thankfully, web users are spoiled for choice when it comes to quality music, movie and game reviews online.

This post is an introduction to the top 10 online review websites, each striking a delicate balance between quality and respect in the field.

All-purpose

1. Metacritic.com is the one-stop shop for many, providing scores out of 100 for newly released games, movies, DVDs and TV shows. Rather than providing unique reviews, Metacritic aggregates all available reviews for a particular product and produces a score averaged across all critics. It’s a quick way to get an overview of how the critical community as a whole has received a certain product, particularly if you’re concerned about the biases of individual critics. Highly recommended.

Movies

2. Rotten Tomatoes is perhaps the best known source of online movie reviews from critics. It aggregates reviews from the critical community and calculates a total score for the film, deeming it either ‘fresh’ or ‘rotten’. The home page for each movie features quotes from each critic, summing up the general tone of their review. It’s a useful way get an idea of how good/bad a movie is while also using the quotes to gauge what aspects of the film stood out.

3. IMDb is a movie information and reviews site for those who’re more interested than the opinion of the masses than the opinions of paid critics. The emphasis is on votes rather than reviews, but the sheer amount of users who participate — in the tens of thousands — leads to a very democratic result.

Music

4. Pitchfork Media is the hipster’s music review site of choice (you can tell by the banner ads for American Apparel). The emphasis here is on less mainstream music, but the reviews are well-written and generally well-respected in the online community.

5. Rolling Stone the magazine publishes its CD reviews online. The focus is on popular music and widely known alternative acts. In other words, those searching for the obscure should look elsewhere. Despite this, the reviews tend to be well-written. After all, if Rolling Stone can’t find any decent music journalists, who can?

6. SPIN is Rolling Stone’s slightly trendier, slightly less mainstream counterpart. The online reviews are also plucked straight out of the magazine. Each review is short and to the point, though the editorial standard is hampered by an annoying tendency to give almost everything three and a half stars.

7. NME is the UK’s premiere music mag. Often a taste-maker, the magazine has frequently been criticized by ‘serious’ music aficionados for its tendency to give names to things that didn’t previously exist (the New Rave genre, for example). Still, the reviews are meatier than other alternatives. NME also has a disturbing tendency to pick out the UK’s ‘next big thing’ — often going on to become the ‘next big thing’ everywhere else, as well.

8. Drowned in Sound threatens to topple Pitchfork Media from its mantle of ‘hippest music review site’. For every band you’ve heard of there’s bound to be one you haven’t. Pretentious, maybe, but you’re almost guaranteed to happen upon some undiscovered gems you’d never have heard about otherwise.

Games

9. Game Rankings is a review aggregating site build especially for gamers. The home page for each game links out to a number of critics reviews while also aggregating a total average score for the game. The site is also highly interactive, awarding points based on user contributions to the community.

10. GameSpot is one of the oldest and most well-known video game sites. While the competition is fierce between the major players (IGN, 1UP and GameSpy), GameSpot is arguably at the fore when it comes to the quality of the reviews it publishes. Each review comes with a neat summary of pros and cons to help you quickly decide if a game is worth laying down cash for.

What’s your favorite place to get reviews online?

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