News You Can Bruise for 2004 December 9

I don't know if you've noticed this, but the Game Roundups are a lot more fun than the Software Roundups, which is why I've been doing GR after GR with nary an SR in sight. In that spirit, here's yet another Game Roundup. Yee-haw!

• JRoller is a fun little Java applet that lets you create roller coasters and watch helpless blue spheres race around them. Somehow the spheres have just enough momentum to make it to the top of the highest hill, no matter how high that hill happens to be at the moment. A neat compact representation of your coaster keeps file size small and makes the board surprisingly editable. All in all a class act. Would make a great executive desk toy were it not for the violation of the conservation of momentum.
• As long as I've got Java installed, I might as well try out this guy's other game applet. Minas is a fun game where you click to build a bridge across a river and then try not to have it fall apart when physics are turned on. It reminds me a lot of a construction toy that I know I wrote about on NYCB but I can't find where.
• CalcRogue is a full-featured Roguelike game that can be played on the TI series of calculators, or on PalmOS as well as Linux and Windows. Truly the robotfindskitten of Roguelikes. Includes shop names like "Paul's Power Potions", and, bizarrely, the prompt "You're so hungry, you could eat a horse! Do so? [Y/n]" Most of the monsters are the original Rogue ones (remember the aquator?). It would be kind of neat to have the Rogue level in Nethack yield only monsters from the original Rogue, some not seen elsewhere in the game.
• Tyrant enjoyably combines microdesigned Ultima-like worlds with randomly-generated Roguelike exploration. Java applet, easy to lose your game by accidentally clicking a Google ad. A lot of fun, and a great in-game tutorial. While I'm giving out funny Roguelike prompts, here's Tyrant's: "The ham is not yours. Steal? [Y/n]" What Would Brak Do?
• David Bellot presents SVG playing cards. I especially like the Mozilla backs-of-cards.
• JZuul is an interactive fiction platform with editor, written in Java. If you're into writing games that can be easily translated into other language, this is your interactive fiction platform. Also allows for real-time MUD-like elements.
• The Virtual Online Aquarium is nice, but would be nicer if you could drag and drop the fish.
• Dodgin' Diamond 2 is a fun spaceship combat game. It's billed as "an 'old school' arcade game", and it delivers, with NES-quality graphics and a synth soundtrack that reminds me of the NES staple The Goonies II. Incidentally, there was an arcade game called The Goonies and then that slightly-similar NES game The Goonies II. Namespace integrity across platforms! Anyway, that's not the point of this entry. The point is Dodgin' Diamond 2. Good clean spaceship-destroying fun.
• On the other hand Tumiki Fighters is groundbreaking, the Katamari Damancy of spaceship combat games. In the world of Tumiki Fighters, everything is made of blocks. Not only is this easy on the rendering engine, but the blocks of your defeated enemies can be bolted onto your prop plane where they act as shielding or still-gamely-firing weaponry. I'm a sucker for this dynamic, as my love of the Mega Man games indicates. And it's just awesome, though the bolted-on parts could stand to take a little more damage before becoming unbolted. The star of this roundup and many others!
• Another by Kenta Cho, author of Tumiki Fighters, A7Xpg looks really cool but is just a chase-around-the-screen game about which I didn't find much special. Tumiki Fighters really got my hopes up, or I'd give this a higher score than I am.
• There are several more Kenta Cho games, but I need to start making dinner so I will deal with them later. You can see them linked from either of those pages.