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:
Back in 2005 Qiu Chengwei, a 41 years-old Shanghai resident, stabbed fellow gamer Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest, causing his death. The reason? Zhu sold the “dragon sabre,” a weapon that they won jointly in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).
Earlier this year four Brazilian men, with ages between 19 and 28, developed a plan to steal the game password of a GunBound (an online multiplayer game) top player. The objective was to sell the game account on the Internet for $8,000.
Back in 2005 a Chinese girl nicknamed “Snowly” died of exhaustion after playing the MMORPG World of Warcraft for three days in a row. She was preparing to kill the Black Dragon Prince, other players explained, hence why she had no time to rest between the game sessions.
A couple of weeks ago a seventeen year-old boy stole almost $6000 worth of virtual furniture in the online game Habbo Hotel. Habbo is a virtual world where people can create houses and other scenarios, but the items need to be purchased with real money.
The details about the case were not revealed, but two Belgian newspapers reported early this year that the Belgian Police would setup an in-game patrol unit to investigate virtual rape incidents.
In the middle of 2005 Blizzard introduced a new area to its popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The boss of the area was able to cast a spell called Corrupted Blood, which was supposed to infect and cause damage to all the players nearby.
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