Games!

Gaming links

• The House of Slack is a game company started by friends of mine from CMU. Go check out their first game, Ascension at Firepeak!
• John Kovalic is a great game designer and comic book artist. Check out Dork Tower and order the first two trade paperbacks!
• Mayfair Games brings us many German games that make us happy, so even though they screwed up Cosmic Encounter and never get anything out on time, we should support them anyway, because German games are cool.
• I am positive that Konami will rule the world someday.

List of games I like

• *The Settlers of Catan -- Settlers is without a doubt an absolute necessity in any gamer's collection. The game itself is simple, but marvelously complex; it plays quickly, but is always enjoyable, and every game is different. Even after many years of playing, I am still addicted to it. It has several expansions/variations, including:
  • *Seafarers of Catan - it makes the geography of Catan much more interesting (you can have several islands and randomized landforms, connected by boats), but doesn't add too much more time into the game. Definitely a good expansion for people who are tired of the "standard" board layout.
  • *Cities and Knights of Catan can be sort of cool, but usually takes so long... it was my favorite expansion for a while though. This expansion adds in more social intrigue, and more special resources.
  • *Starfarers of Catan RULES if you like cool pieces. You get tons of cool spaceships and lasers and boosters and stuff. Essentially the game is Settlers in Space, but there's a more exploratory vein to it, and cool alien races and space encounters.

• *Puerto Rico is like, everything good about Settlers, without everything bad about Settlers. You have different roles, and gain victory points through shipping commodities and building stuff. It requires you to play the board strategy production game, but also to play the psych-your-opponents game, wherein sometimes you don't do moves because they are good for you, but because they are bad for everyone else. It's really fun.

• *Tigris and Euphrates is another territorial German game that I like and acquired a copy of. It's limited to 3-4 players, but is pretty interesting. You use tiles to build up kingdoms, acquiring victory points for yourself through expanding the areas your leaders inhabit, or attacking other players' kingdoms.

• Entdecker is another fun tile game in which you are sailing into the ocean and exploring new islands. You try to get your scouts and settlements on the biggest, best islands.

• *Carcassonne is a tile game much like Entdecker, except you are lying down tiles to build a city. There's also a version where you are making rivers and forests and meadows. In all, it's a fun quick game, very easy to pick up.

• *Iron Dragon is a fantasy railroad building game. There's a board, representing the map of this fantasy land (where elves, men, dwarves, orcs, etc inhabit), and you build your rails by drawing on it with crayons. You deliver contracts to get more money to build more rails to run faster trains. It's a wonderful game, even if I have never, ever, ever won it.

• *Nippon Rails - Another railbuilding game, but this one is on a map of Japan. Also a lot of fun, and takes less time than Iron Dragon.

• *Manhattan is a fun territorial board game, which is basically sort of like Ice Towers without the chaos factor. You use your pieces to build buildings on a fake Manhattan, hoping to take over as many valuable buildings and neighborhood regions as possible, while also having the tallest skyscrapers.

• *Lost Cities is currently my favorite 2-player card game. It has a board, but barely.

• Cosmic Encounter - always a fun one. Carl has this game and we've played more variations on it than I can count. Dominate the galaxy and make sure everyone except Kevin wins! They've rereleased it now, but it looks way lame and is missing major parts of the original game. The basic premise is intergalactic war and diplomacy, and you have all of these alien powers that allow you to do weird stuff in attacking the other star systems.

• Twilight Imperium - it's sort of like Axis and Allies in space, but it is much more fun. Well, as long as Brian isn't the Merchants, that is. Twilight has all the cool pieces of Axis and Allies, and all the diplomacy joy of Diplomacy, and the Alien Race fun of Cosmic Encounter, but yet is another game in its own right.

• *Illuminati - One I've been playing since highschool. I have a copy of the reprint... another one of taking over the world. Where else can the KGB, aided by the Bavarian Illuminati and Empty Vee, take over the Goldfish Fanciers?

• *Talisman - I finally have a copy of this. It's a roleplaying-like game without the roleplaying - you pick a character, and go around and beat up things and collect items so you can get into the middle of the board and kill everyone off slowly. Although this game rules when you're drunk, it's perfectly fun sober too, and supports huge numbers of players. TOAD!

• Robo Rally - Various friends have various versions of this game. You program robots, and they are supposed to get flags, but what really happens is that they shoot each other a lot and fall into pits. Josh and I used to play this as a drinking game.

• *Ricochet Robot is a great puzzle game, sort of like Robo Rally except you don't program the robots, and they have no brakes. There is a Ricochet Robot Challenge Page online, if you want to try it out.

• Abalone - became a project at PGSS '97. It's sort of like a weird Chinese Checkers game, but cooler - you shift marbles around and try to push off the other player.

• *Risk - My mother bought me a copy of Risk for Christmas the other year. However, nobody wants to play it anymore, because it's dumb.

• *Shogun - or Samurai Swords as they call it now. This is a Risk-like game, except it is in feudal Japan, and you are trying to take over most of the main islands.

• *Escape From Elba - You're Napoleon. So is everyone else. I think this game is pretty much a combination of Battle Scrabble and Clue.

• *Trumpet - this is a cross between a board game and a card game. You take tricks and move along the board and set the trump suit. It's a lot of fun.

• *Apples To Apples - This game rules if you are in a really silly mood and have a ton of players. I first played it at Ralph's, and went and got a copy. People read out adjectives and you put out nouns that match it, and then someone judges which is the most accurate. The combinations are usually wildly hilarious.

• *Mhing - Basically, Mah Jongg as a card game with some variations. Carl and I both have decks, and it's pretty neat.

• Give Me The Brain - You're a bunch of zombies in a fast food chain, with one brain to share amongst all of you, and tons of work to do..

• Bridge - THE card game. I used to play way too much.

• Egyptian Rat Screw - If you play this game, please let me know. I can't find anyone willing to play with me anymore except George.

• Rook - speaking of George, she made a page about our weird 5-player variation that everyone at CMU plays of this trick-taking game.

• Attrition - Another trick-taking game - very weird rules involving trump suit changing with each card led.

• Hearts / Widow - I'm sure you're familiar with Hearts. Widow is basically Hearts with a trump suit.

• *Wizard - Someone went and packaged "Oh Hell"... this is another trick-taking game that goes from hands of one card to up to 12 cards.

• DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION . How else would lazy videogamers bother to get up and exercise?

• Para Para Paradise(jps2). This is another great music dancing game.

• Pop'n'Music (jpsx/jps2) - This is one of the most fun music games ever. You hit these big colorful buttons in time as little cute pop-kun characters float down the screen to fun happy music. I wuv Pop'n'Music. I really only play it in the arcade, but I plan to get a Ransai PNM controller soon.

• Beatmania(jpsx/jps2) - another music game, this one has you pretending to be a DJ. Beatmania IIDX is awesome.

• DrumMania (JPS2) - Not much fun at home but awesome in the arcade, this is a drum simulation game.

• KeyboardMania (JPS2) - Along the same lines as Beatmania, except rather than having a small keyboard, you have two octaves of a piano-like keyboard to play with.

• SSX (PS2) - this is an awesome snowboarding game. The graphics alone are drooltastic, but it's also a very addicting fun game.

• Frequency (PS2) - This is the only American music game I own. It's really trippy, but I enjoy it anyway, mostly due to the song Science Genius Girl being included in it.

• Final Fantasy 6 (SNES) - The best RPG video game I've ever played. Wonderful plot and music.

• Final Fantasy 5 (SNES) - Played through it in Japanese. Not as good as FF4 or FF6, but still interesting.

• Final Fantasy 4 (SNES) - Has the best FF soundtrack ever (with the FF4 Celtic Moon CD). Not as good as FF6, but still an excellent game in its own right.

• Arcana (SNES) - Dorky, but I liked it anyway. Lots of wacky stuff with elements and cards.

• Devil Dice (PSX) - A really fun puzzle game, though once you beat the first 100 levels, it gets stupid. Of course, if you find other friends to play Battle Mode with, it gets unstupid again.

• Soul Blade (PSX) - A fighting game that I like because it's "pretty". Don't ask. Taki owns you.

• Super Puzzle Fighter (PSX) - I like falling pieces games. This is one, and it's very cute, and a TON of fun to play either with a normal controller or on a DDR pad.

• Bust-a-Move (PSX) - Bubble, bobble, whatever. It's still a lot of fun, and a nice reversal from falling pieces games.

• Super Bomber Man (SNES) - Blow things up. Even better if you can find lots of people to play with and blow up.

• Gunstar Heroes (Genesis) - So, you have all of these different guns. You can also toss around the two players. It's cool.

• Dr. Mario (NES) - While lots of people diss this game, they're retarded. It's one of the most fun falling-pieces games out there. I even ported it to Java at one point.

• The Legend of Zelda (NES) - The first console RPG I ever played, it's still so much more fun than many of its successors. Most people find that the labyrinths are still marked in their head more clearly than their old neighborhoods.

• Contra (NES) - let's face it, this is the most awesome side-scrolling shooter game ever invented. I can beat the whole game in 14 minutes or so, without the cheats. Damn, I love Contra. So should you.

• Puzzle Pirates (PC) - This is the first MMOG I've played since I swore off MUDs ten years ago. It's fabulous and incorporates a lot of my favorite puzzle games, in addition to being funny and interactive with plenty of other puzzle nerds. Yar!

• AD&D (Krynn, Greyhawk) - I've been playing D&D for like twelve years. While I was a diehard D&D 2nd ed person for ages, I've really grown to love D&D 3E. I've played in countless campaigns of both, and even run two. Krynn would be my favorite world, although nobody plays it anymore. I was in a long Greyhawk campaign before I moved to Seattle (like 3 years), and think it's also way cool. Forgotten Realms had some great novels but the world isn't as interesting to me, unless you count dark elves. My favorite 3E campaign so far was where we played our own home-grown ninja clan, though. *shrug*

  Oh yeah, and I collect dice.

• Paranoia - the Computer is your friend. Obey the Computer.