Something new here for you this week…a lot of people have tried the eBay and Craigslist routes for buying and selling things, but there is a new kid on the block that calls himself Yardsellr. What’s better, Yardsellr has its offerings divided into “blocks,” one of which is dedicated entirely to Boardgames.

Where else would you see Risk: 2210 for $20? There are a lot of rarities and antique games lurking about too. Also, if you’re a fan of Facebook, you can become a fan of Yardsellr there as well and see the latest updates to the merchandise and even take advantage of those features to sell your own games. (Twitter too)

I love it, and I think it’s a giant step in the right direction for the secondary boardgame market. I would love to see Yardsellr gain more steam, so check it out for yourself and tell them we sent you!

Have a great week. Class dismissed!

It’s been a while since I posted about Nintendo8, a site where you can play NES games (among other systems) in your browser using a simple Java applet, but I’ve recently found something even better.

There are a lot of ROM hacks out there, that are essentially modifications to the original games, they range from graphical improvements, fixes for bugs that the original programmers didn’t find, to full-fledged brand new games on their own. The problem with them is that not a lot of people have the know-how regarding emulators, much less ips patching and making sure you have the correct rom with the correct header and all of that crap to make them work properly.

I love ROM hacks, I play them all the time, but even I get stumped and frustrated with the specifics that cause them to malfunction from time to time. In one of these particular episodes, I just went looking for “Prepatched rom hacks” on google and started scoping out the results.

My findings were shocking.

I came across a neat site called Vizzed Retro Game Room that allows you to play NES, SNES, even N64 games all in your browser, requiring only a small applet to be installed (which I have confirmed to be virus-free). What’s more, they have a ton of Rom Hacks up there too, ready to play, no hassle required.

The site lets you play 5 games for “free” before forcing you to register on their forums, but I have confirmed that signing up is also free, it’s just a small step they added for some reason. But nonetheless, this is pretty awesome.

Allow me now to draw your attention to one particular ROM Hack that simply blew me away, it’s called Mario Adventure, and it is a COMPLETE REBUILD OF SUPER MARIO BROS 3 WITH NEW POWERS AND A COMPLETELY NEW WORLD DESIGN.

Did that get your attention?

For that matter, check out the entire category of ROM hacks, just of Mario games. Some are hit-and-miss, but many of them are made of win.

Enjoy!

Video tape her and give her a website, duh.

For those of you who don’t know, Old Grandma Hardcore is NOT an adult website, but rather it is exactly what I have described above.

How could you not love this?

It isn’t porn, but it still ain’t for kids. Check out Old Grandma Hardcore, it’s pretty adorable, and funny.

http://oghc.blogspot.com/

I was too impressed by this to not post it. Enjoy!

Today, I’d like to share an article I found a long time ago with a list of good sites where one can download old PC games for free, and add one of my own. The original article was found on a site I actually enjoy a lot, called Makeuseof. The article can be found here

The sites showcased in the Makeuseof article are the following:

Remain In Play

Dos Museum

Abandonia

Wikipedia’s List of Commercial Video Games Released as Freeware

As far as I can tell, all of the above sites are alive and well. But I would like to add a site to the list that I have known for a long time:

Home of the Underdogs

A lot of you who know about Abandonware probably know about this one, you probably also know that it was taken down recently. But I’m pleased to report that the site is being rebuilt and is slowly returning to its former glory. They don’t seem to provide direct downloads for the games anymore, but they do provide links that reliably deliver results to sites that do. If anything, check out this one for the directories and sheer information about each classic game and also to see their recommendations for games similar to those you like.

Check it out, and enjoy some of those old games!

Class dismissed!

Hope everyone who got their hands on Starcraft 2 has been loving it as much as I have. Even though I got to play the beta, the release is still surprising me in its depth and sheer content.

One of the things I was looking forward to the most in Starcraft 2 was the map editor. I am far from mastering it myself, it is unwieldy and very user-unfriendly but it definitely delivers…and here’s the proof.

You want to see what other people are doing with this thing? Have an idea for a project and need some input or perhaps some partners to collaborate with? Go check out SC2Mapster.

I can’t wait to see some of these projects finished, memories from the original like Smash TV maps, Paintball rpg maps, Diablo RPG maps. It’s all just too great.

Did I mention that people are making top-down shooter maps, and someone has even made a playable Tetris map?

Yes. Tetris. Mother F-ing Supply Depot Tetris.

It’s indescribable. Check it all out here: http://www.sc2mapster.com/

Class dismissed!

Good morning everybody, some fine folks recently took notice of my interest in Poker, and asked me to go check out this fancy news site, WSOP Journal. For anyone interested in up-to-the-minute updates about all World Series of Poker news, this site is the official source.

They’ve got updates on official WSOP events and schedules and even resources on educating yourself about poker and how to become a pro.

They even have their own online poker room, which actually has a really slick interface. You can specify “favorites” by selecting a series of options like game type, limit type, and there’s also this awesome little double-slider to specify a range of acceptable stakes. That’s something I’d like to see more of.

We know you’ve seen the World Series of Poker on TV, and you probably want to know more. So go check this place out, WSOPJournal.COM

This is an advertisement

She was right.

Things We Think About Games is a collection of bite-sized ideas, feelings, recommendations, and warnings all about what it means to play games, make games, sell games, and love games. It dares you to consider why you play games in the first place, what makes you enjoy them, and why you prefer them (or don’t) over other types of entertainment media.

With contributions from a collective of gamers and experts including Wil Wheaton, this book, although it could be considered light reading, is a barrage of eye-opening feasts-for-thought about the world of gaming, some presented enigmatically in an “Art of War” sort of way- challenging you to apply the principals of World of Warcraft to your everyday life, to things as silly (although poignant) as “Don’t be a dick.”

I read this book entirely in a single afternoon, and that’s saying something, I typically don’t sit down to read very often anymore, and I probably haven’t read anything cover to cover (outside of audiobooks if you want to count that) since my early years of college. Each page could be taken individually and reflected upon for an entire day before going to the next. I learned a lot about game design just with a few short passages, and I feel that these writings would be a great asset to any game player that would help himself (and everyone around him) to have more fun playing. If I ever taught a class or seminar about game design, this would be required reading.

Check this book out at gameplaywright.net

Diggity

Plankton Games – Dave Dobson

2-4 Players

Ages 12+

~30 Minutes

Overview

Diggity is a strategic card game in which each player takes turns placing cards down on the table to create a single contiguous Mine (in somewhat of a “Water Works” fashion.) each room in the mine has a symbol, or shape on it. By playing Mine rooms near each other, creating certain sequences of shapes, you can create tools that will help you protect the Gold you excavate from the Mine, or to steal it from others. Whoever has the most Gold when all Gold the cards are gone is the winner!

Rulebook

Extremely well written and incredibly concise; this is a very light game and the rules are not very complex. The rules are written on one page (front and back) and there was room leftover for diagrams. We had absolutely no trouble figuring this game out when we got down to it and well-written rules can really help a game. Rulebook gets an A+ from me.

Startup

Was really no trouble at all, thanks to the simple nature of the game; we shuffled up the Mine cards and Gold cards dealt out some Mine cards to everyone, and got right to playing. It took a couple rounds for us to see the strategy and the point of the different tools and why you might not want to use them at certain strategic points. But there is a learning curve involved with every game and this is no exception and it certainly won’t count against it. After a few rounds we really got into the swing of things and began deliberately trying to screw whoever was ahead, Diggity is quite excellent in this regard.

Art

The art in the game left little to be desired. It accomplishes what it sets out to do and it does so very cleanly. The colors are vibrant enough for the subject matter, and everything is easy to read. A+ here also.

What could be better?

Not a lot that I could think of. It would make things more interesting if maybe a fifth tool could be added in some way so that a fifth player could play the game, but I really couldn’t think of anything that would be suitable. It is difficult to improve upon a game like this because it hit its target so well as a light strategy card game for four players. There isn’t a lot of expansion potential, which I enjoy in a lot of games, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Final Word

The experience I had with Diggity is difficult to describe…you ever order something online like, say, from Amazon, and you know that it is the size of a cell phone, but they send it to you inside a box that could fit a small TV which contains two progressively smaller boxes, full of packing peanuts and such? Diggity isn’t like that. I ordered something that is the size of a cell phone, and it came in a cell phone sized package, with no fluff, and nothing unnecessary added. The game has a purpose, and it serves that purpose in a very elegant way. Diggity is light enough to play with your kids, and compact enough to take on road trips or anywhere you go, as long as you’ll have a big enough table to play on. Diggity didn’t exactly change my life, but it serves as a role model of good design. This is a great game that does what it was meant to do without any static at all. For that, I think it deserves a 5. If you ever played Water Works, or enjoy Puzzle games, I really think you’d get a kick out of Diggity.

Check out Diggity and tons of other great games over at The Game Crafter

[The Author has graciously donated a copy of his game, ‘Diggity’ for the purposes of this review. Thank you very much! We had a lot of fun, and I appreciate your patience during the review process! If anyone else would like to have his or her game reviewed and advertised for free on www.gamersuniversity.com, please feel free to email me at Endymian @ gmail . com!]

Say hello to Ethan Endymian Stedman