Highlights from the kids involved:

“Yeah, you don’t know cuz you’re a grown up… You hardly do this… You have work to do!”

and the kid describing Mario:

“It’s weird.”

I would’ve been about the same age as these kids back then. The only game console we ever had in that era was the Sega Master System, with games like Operation Wolf (light-gun!!) and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. We also had a PC, so I tended to play that more often (games like Lemmings, Commander Keen and the original platform Duke Nukem). I missed out on the golden age of Nintendo, aside from playing a Super Nintendo at a friend’s house.

Sad.

This video still makes me nostalgic as hell.

Because of the sandbox nature of Minecraft, it has a ton of potential uses. One such potential use is using the game to teach – read about how one teacher in New York City implemented the game into his computer class at his Minecraft Teacher Blog.

In other news, I saw this trailer last night and thought it was fantastic. It merely intrigues me about the game – it doesn’t suggest the game will be good, since it doesn’t show gameplay – but damn it if it isn’t one of the best trailers I’ve seen in a long time. This was all over Twitter last night, so I’m guessing it’s provoked a high level of hype, and so whoever put the trailer together has definitely done their job well. Check it out, here’s the trailer for the upcoming game Dead Island (warning: contains simulated gore):

* Debatable.

The game sees you enter the mansion of Henry Stauf, a crazed toy maker who enjoys to see you suffer through the agony of his twisted, complex puzzles. Being so young, I found the puzzles very challenging and I’m not sure I completed many past the first handful of puzzles. I did, however, use the “ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX” cheat in the menu to go and check out every room of the house and the scenarios therein (hey, I was young, cheating wasn’t a big deal!). The game featured a ton of awesomely awful acting and story twists, including a fair share of creepy horror moments, this one being my particular favourite that always freaked me out as a kid (the clip seems laughable now, but I still hate clowns):

The 7th Guest is due to be re-released on the iOS platforms of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch this Christmas, and I’m really looking forward to it. Maybe this time I’ll be able to legitimately get through the game’s puzzles.

Damn this looks hot. The first game was fantastic. The second game, whilst it hit a bit of a lull in the middle, was still pretty awesome thanks to the last few chapters. The other good news is that Ken Levine is back on board for this one. Can’t wait to check this out.

• There is no collision detection with anything other than the ground. Bridges are simply a mirage. You can also drive off the end of the map. Physics? Pah, take that Newton!
• The box and gameplay description of the game advertise that the player must escape from the police. Lucky for you, there are actually no police in the game. The law is a lie. In fact, there is pretty much zero plot to the game whatsoever.
• In the originally released version, enemy trucks had no AI and, as such, never left the starting position. Praise be that a patch was eventually released which gave life to these lumbering beasts. The patch also gave the great privilege of adding sound effects to the game.
• Text on the player’s HUD doesn’t fit properly.
• The game fails to distinguish between the player starting or finishing when crossing the line, so you may receive a “YOU’RE WINNER” message within a second of starting the game. Rewarding feedback leads to high levels of player engagement, right?

Despite all this, the game still sold 20,000 copies. In fairness, from watching the video, it looks pretty damn entertaining.

I was first introduced to Carcassonne thanks to it being given away free of charge for a limited time on Xbox 360 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Xbox Live. After a few plays and having grown accustomed to the rules (well, most of them) the game really began to grow on me, and I’ve since played the original board game. Within the last few days an iPhone version of the game has been released… and its pretty damn good!

If you’re unfamiliar with Carcassonne, Wikipedia provides a nice summary of how the game is played:

The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it abuts: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities.

After placing the new tile, the placing player may opt to station a follower piece on that tile. The follower can only be placed on the just-placed tile, and must be placed in a specific feature. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature—road, field, city, or cloister—and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by another player’s follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared after the further placement of tiles. For example, two field tiles which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by another terrain tile.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time all features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers in them. The player with the most points wins the game.

The iPhone version of the game offers several modes of play. Normal mode is the original board game, which can be played either locally with up to 5 people (friends over Wi-fi or bluetooth or fairly intelligent AI CPU players) or online with friends or random players. Solitaire mode pits you alone against the game, with the goal of meeting a list of requirements. The original board game included several expansion packs – these aren’t present at the moment but may become available in future, presumably as purchasable downloadable content.

So far I’ve been predominantly playing Normal mode, both with CPU players and friends, and its rather good. Play is turn-based, meaning you can take your go and then exit the app. Push notifications can be enabled to notify you when your friend has made their move. The app is extremely polished, provides an in-game chat room, shows your friend’s current online status and provides an overview of what tiles are remaining. The game board can be zoomed in and out of easily using the usual pinch gestures and controls are easy and unobtrusive. Online games are ranked, assigning the player with an overall skill rating which increases or decreases with each win or loss respectively.

A couple of minor gripes are that the app runs a bit sluggish on an iPhone 3G or earlier (runs fine on 3GS onwards), and it should be easier to switch between games while on the go – at the minute this requires opening the options screen and pausing the game, which isn’t a very appropriately labeled option since it doesn’t pause the game at all, but rather takes you back to the menus. The game also tends to suck your battery a bit if you have it running for a while.

These problems do little to tarnish what is a great version of an addictive and fun casual game, joining Words With Friends as one of the must-have turn-based iPhone games, suitable even for those with a busy lifestyle. The app is currently available for the introductory price of £2.99 ($4.99), but will soon be priced at £5.99 ($9.99) so I recommend picking this up as soon as possible if you want to save some cash. Its well worth it.

Link: Official app site with trailer video

For a highly comprehensive review with tons of screenshots, check out this great post from ackmonduel over at boardgamegeek.com.

But what of butch ladies and girly gentlemen? I can see some offended players in the future. In relation to that, I found some of the comments on the Engadget post hilarious, notably “How’s Lady Gaga supposed to get her game on?” to which someone replied “Natal obviously can’t see her Poker Face silly”.  Genius.

Hit the jump for the video.

via Engadget.

Bring it on! Eurogamer recently published this interesting feature on the current state of 3D TV’s and 3D games.