Push Button B

Here ya go folks, as a Labor day special I present to you the game that started it all, ZERO WING!!!

For those of you have never heard of Zero Wing, welcome to the internet.  You would think with all of the hysteria about “all your base are belong to us” that the game that goes with the insanely popular meme has no chance at being a good game.  It turns out though that Zero Wing is actually a decent side scrolling shooter.

There’s really nothing all that special about it but I’m sure most people haven’t had a chance to play the game that spawned the legend.  The game has power ups for your weapons and your ship exactly like every other game of the genre ever made so you shouldn’t have any troubles figuring it out.  So give it a go, and remember to fly right and shoot and have a happy labor day.

Zero Wing

That’s right folks, not one but two games this week.  I know I know, I give too much, but it’s who I am.

First up is Color Theory.

Color Theory is a puzzle platformer where you have to use colors to manipulate the stages.  The concept of the game is kind of difficult to understand without actually seeing it or playing it…so here’s a picture.

Basically you hit the different color plus signs to add or remove parts of the stage to progress.  There are also combined color signs that remove the colors that were used to make that color.  The game apparently works on the additive theory of colors which is all explained if you click the how to play button and click more info.  But I’ll save you some time, jut play it and you’ll figure it out, there’s no need to go and make this educational if we don’t have to.  The routs are usually fairly obvious but challenging enough to make it fun.  The game introduces new mechanics the farther you get into it, but I’ll save those for you to find out.  The levels are fairly short and there are only 30 of them so beating the game is not a big task,  I think I did it in about 20 minutes.  The game is well thought out and (except for the music) and enjoyable to the last level so i reccomend you head here and give it a whirl.

Second on the list today is Super PSTW!

Super Press Space To Win is an rpg of sorts (as the title implies) but only in a vague sense.  You control a stick figure wielding a sword and your only mission is to hit the space bar a bunch of times.

Super PSTW is super easy, I’m not really sure you can even lose, but you do most certainly have to press the space button. As far as I can tell about the plot of the game, you seem to be a black man facing off against various other colors of men and even a small blue thing.  It takes about 4 minutes to beat and leaves you with out too much satisfaction at the end, much like most rpgs I’ve ever played.  So give it a shot, it’s free and i hear the plot rivals FFXIII without all of that walking around to get in the way.

So if you have a few minutes to waste head on over here and waste away. 

Have a great week and let me know what you think of this weeks crap..i mean post.

The Line Game Orange edition is one of about a million different guide the dot through the maze games.  Your goal is to make it to the finish area by avoiding the walls and the red obstacles.  This game is not very unique to the genre other than the graphics being a bit better than most. 

There are also oranges you can collect, but i have no idea what they do and I don’t care.  Just guide your little orange line through the maze and fail at it like I do, it’s fun i promise.  Also, here’s another picture…

Oh yeah there are also rotating black parts of the stage that you have to stay in, as seen in the picture above.  Don’t get out of them or you will curse and stop playing the game and then I’ll be to blame for your terrible experience.

Play it here at 1cup1coffee.com

No no, I’m not talking about Basscomm, I’m Talking about Beneath a Steel Sky, a game that time has forgotten about.  If you came here today looking for greatness…you picked a good day to visit.

BASS was originally released in 1994 by those wacky Brits on the SCUMM engine and mixes humor, sci-fi story telling and a strong serving of cyberpunk.  For those of you unfamiliar with cyberpunk go here for a wikipedia definition.  It basically means that its a scenario where science and technology have progressed and futuristic devices exist but society has taken a turn for the worse, much like Blade Runner or maybe Borderlands.  BASS is also know for its art work that was done by Dave Gibbons, more popularly know as the guy that did the ink work for the  Watchmen as well as various other comic books of the time.  The graphics, although dated by todays standards, are amazing.  The worlds are cleverly designed and do a great deal to convey the atmosphere of the game.

The game is set in a future Australia where there has been a major fallout of one variety or another and most all of the land has been made unlivable.  The story follows Robert Foster after he is adopted by Aboriginals in the outback after a helicopter crash when he was a small child that left him parentless and stranded in “The Gap”. The Gap is the barren wasteland between the two major factory cities.   The opening movie shows that Robert Foster is being hunted down by soldiers from Union City that are being controlled by a computer named LINC. All of the opening is illustrated by Dave Gibbons and has full voice narration and voice acting.  One thing that sets this game apart from some of the similar games of the time was that all of the characters had voices and almost every line was spoken out loud and with the added bonus of top notch art work made this game very easy on the senses.

So as I was saying, you control Robert foster and his sidekick Joey the robot that he built living with the natives of Australia.  After being forced back to Union City the helicopter you were brought in on crashes, bringing your escape from custody and the start of the game. Your mission is to find out why the authorities are looking for you and what is really going on with the mysterious LINC computer system and eventually gain your freedom. The controls are a lot like other point and click SCUMM games.  Left mouse controls where you go as well as using it to examine items. Your right mouse button controls actions like open and use and talk and so on.  F5 brings up your menu to save and load and adjust game settings. Side note: I noticed when I saved my game to a slot nothing showed up as being there, so if this happens to you don’t worry, its there it just doesn’t show up.

I won’t spoil anymore of the games story, you’ll just have to play it yourself.  Its is stuffed fully of funny dialogue and sight gags as well as a serious tale of corporate greed and oppression.  In 2003 the game was declared freeware from its producers and is freely available from many sites on the web. You can get it from the SCUMMVM site or from Good old Games, which I highly recommend.  Their site is much easier to navigate and you don’t need to download SCUMMVM to play it and its still 100% free and DRM free.  Also at GOG you can get the manual and other artwork for the game as a separate download.  They have a very good layout and many download options once the game is in your library.  I could spend a whole article talking about how much i love GOG.com, but I’ll save it for another day, just go there and get the game and I promise you will be happy.  So if you love point and click adventure games and cyberpunk post apocalyptic future dystopias with a sense of humor, then this game is for you.  Its is also available on iPhone and Android for .99c with a few updates to the game play thrown in.

Greetings.  This weeks games is another game by nitrome, the same guys that  made the previous game of the week tiny castle.  So sit back and prepare your self for the challenge of FAULT LINE!!!!!

In fault line you play as a robot  with rocket hands that you use to connect nodes together to alter the level (more on that in a bit.)  You control your robot man with the wasd keys to move and the mouse to launch your hands at different nodes.  The point of the game is to make it to the exit by connecting to of the white nodes together to change the level to progress to the next area that was unreachable.  The way you alter the level is by connecting the dot you remove all of the level in between it all the way across the screen.  See the pictures below to make more sense of it.

level before and after

As with most games the puzzles get harder as the game progresses.  You get multiple nodes to connect to moving platforms to deal with and a massive migraine to deal with once you get about 10 levels in.  I won’t lie, the game gets pretty hard, but its an enjoyable hard (insert bad joke here). I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think.

Tune in next week when we get a little scummy wit it!

Play Fault Line here

Greetings and salutations.  I’m feeling kind of lazy today, it was a bit of a long weekend.  I was looking through my game library  to find a game that required the least amount of movement from me as possible.  My solution…

The Adventures of One Button Bob!!!11!!!oneone!!!eleven!!!!1!1 Sit back and relax, you don’t even need to lean forward to use the keyboard, so loosen the bolt on your swivel chair and lean that baby all the way back cause all you need for this adventure is the mouse .  TAoOBB is a side scrolling adventure platforming game.  It starts off with a commodore loading screen and then the actions begins…and by action i mean the title screen seen above and a super catchy theme song, so catchy in fact that I’m including a youtube video for it made by someone that is most definitely not me.  Its no Robot Unicorn Attack, but its got some bitchin sweet guitar riffs and 100% less androgynous man woman singing.

On with the game.  In TAoOBB you use the left mouse button to deal with a number of different tasks that each level presents you.  like in this level …

…you use the button to throw the boomerang at the batty and that only, it has no other function…until the next level, that is.

Now you use it to make him move forward onto the moving platform by holding it in.  There are only a few basic types of levels that get harder as you progress.  You throw, climb, stop, go and jump your way through the games few levels.  Its fairly easy to get to the end, its more of a beat the game in as few clicks as possible type game, but it will provide you with a few minutes of good fun.  Your clicks are rewarded at the end with a boss level that I guarantee will make you cuss.  My score was 350 clicks, see if you can beat that (should be easy i didn’t do to great at the boss stage).

Play it here at Armor Games…or here or here or here or here or here or here or here

here, play action turnip, run jump shoot, and listen to the groovy soundtrack

Happy holiday weekend.

Here

Well due to some storm complications from last night the post i had prepared will have to wait until later.  So in the mean time to keep you occupied i give you Fart Fart.  In Fart Fart your goal is to pass gas while other cars pass so the guy standing next to you doesn’t notice.  The space bar releases the mighty wind and the left arrow key lets you squeak out a silent but not so deadly release.  If the multi color bar (shown below) gets all of the way full you fart uncontrollably and the guy hears it if no car is going by.  This is one of the few games that I have played that I can see a direct life application, this is important stuff people.

Play Fart Fart here

And since we’re already on the subject… Its my honor to also present you Puzzle Farter.  In Puzzle Farter you play as a little clown…or at least i think he’s a clown maybe he’s just a grumpy midget.  Speaking of taking a grumpy, this little fella has some major dietary problems.  The objective is to use your rocket farts to propel you through the puzzles and to the exit door.  Now I’m not really sure what’s behind all the doors, but I’d like to think there is eventually a bathroom for the little guy.

I must admit that the juvenile in me thought the sound effects in this game were about the funniest thing I have ever heard, the game is worth playing just to hear them.  I hope you enjoy your evening of flatulence, I’m off to dinner.

Play Puzzle Farter here

This has been a bit of a hell week for me, so i thought I’d share my feelings with you with two of the most frustrating games i have ever played.

#1  Chase- Goose

In Chase – Goose you have to hit the right and left buttons to move your guys forward and hit the correct button to jump over the gap all while running away from the upside down chin monster.  I’ll warn you this game is hard, you have to pound the right and left arrow keys fast, for a long time all while trying to find the button you need to hit to jump (which changes every jump).  As you make it farther in the game you have to hold down the shift key as well as hitting right and left and still finding the correct jump key, then it starts making you do math to find the right button, its multitasking at its worst.  Speaking of multitasking….

#2 Multitask

In Multitask you have to control four different things at one time (the picture only shows three because I failed before the fourth one popped up).  You start off with a balance board and a red ball that you control with the arrow keys left and right.  It later adds the blue rectangle that you control with the up and down arrow keys to try and avoid the incoming arrows.  If you can make it past all of that (which really isn’t too hard) you get a green square that you control with the wasd keys.  The objective of the green square is to guide it to the squares with the number in it before time runs out in the square.  It adds a fourth one, but at the time of review i did not make it that far so I’ll let that be a mystery for you.

I hope these games can bring a little frustration to your week, i know they did for me.

This weeks game is Balloon in a Wasteland.  You play as a fella with a snazzy hat trying to repair your crashed hot air balloon .  The game has a tower defense type feel to it but i wouldn’t call it one.  Your objective is to fend off hoards of black blobby things all while trying to repair your balloon.

As the game progresses it throws more and more blobs at you until there’s more than you can handle.  To fight back you can upgrade your weapons, build a fort that keeps you safe while the enemies pass, lay down traps and even build turrets on your fort.  If you do not upgrade the enemies move slow enough that you will never get enough time to repair your balloon between waves and the game will go on forever.  You also have to watch your stamina bar because once it gets below 50% your accuracy starts dropping fast, so don’t forget to hop into your fort and sleep for a bit to quickly refill it.

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The one thing that usually keeps me away from these types of games is that there is never a real objective or an end. In BIAW once you get the balloon up, you win.  I quite enjoyed the game, it had a good pace and the art style was very good to convey you being stranded in a field with a bunch of bad guys.  I didn’t notice until i was done with it that it was made by the same guy that made Achievement Unlocked and a few other really good games I know will show up on this site here soon.

I hope you enjoy Balloon in a Westland as much as i did.