We travel afar to the mythical world of Chantra, the world where the Archlord rules and mystical battles are being fought on a daily basis. Humans, Orcs and Moon Elves rule the land. This is a cruel world, where everyday matters are decided by the steel of swords and the blood masking the grass. Fierce elemental beings walk the earth and mysterious quests are waiting to be solved.
There’s one question that lies on everybody’s lips; who will be the next Archlord? Who will prove worthy? The gallery of heroes can never be long enough. Chantra is in need of those ‘ordinary heroes’. People like you.
Frets on Fire is a free and open source game for Windows, Mac and Linux that comes with the goal of picking up your keyboard and trying to rock out just like the first guys on the keytar. Frets on Fire will definitely remind you of Guitar Hero, because the gameplay is very similar. If you have always wanted to test out the new music games, but didn’t have the cash, read on to find out how you can still rock out in style.
If you’ve played a video game console in the last couple of years, there is almost a 100% chance you’ve come into contact with a color-matching game. Dance Dance Revolution (DDR to the initiated), Guitar Hero, and Rock Band are all games in this genre. Guitar Hero in particular has been reproduced or cloned on almost every gaming platform, including the Nintendo DS. Now, a version of the popular rhythm game has found its way onto the iPhone.
If anyone ever asks me what I know about the stock market I’ll probably just blink a couple of times, smile wide, then walk away. If however, someone asks me about my opinion on video game sales I’m likely to talk their ears off until they smile wide and walk away.
Luckily for people like me, the internet has spawned yet another reason for us to avoid that crazy place we call the real world. It’s called the simExchange, an online prediction market that centers around the real world sales numbers of video games.
What happens when BitTorrent meets Hamachi meets remote desktop meets networking? Well you get something similar to Remobo. Remobo lets you create an IPN which is an Instant Private Network.
Lets see what you can do with an IPN, Remobo and how to set it all up.
Remobo allows you to:
In the previous installment of these emulation series, you saw how to play Sony PlayStation (PSX) games on your PC.
Many of you told me (in the comments here and on Digg.com) how the first PlayStation was too outdated, and thus not interesting. ‘Passé’, one might say.
Because of that and because it was planned anyway, we’ll raise the stakes a bit. This time, we’ll be discussing emulation of PlayStation 2 games.
Anyone can create video games! Now before you start shaking me saying, “You’re crazy, Abe! Me, create video games? Come on!” you should know about possibly the coolest Windows application around: Game Maker.
As you can probably guess, it promises to make creating your own computer games simpler. It certainly lives up to its promise, and for many reasons, but I think the main reason is because it replaces the arduous task of writing thousands of lines of cryptic code with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Best of all, it’s free.
If you’ve spent any amount of time playing Flash games instead of whatever you SHOULD have been doing, you’ve probably played Bejeweled. It’s a gem-matching game where lining up three or more of the same color cancels out the set. Now a very similar game has come out for the iPhone and it blends the classic gem game with something resembling a Role Playing Game (RPG).
Hamachi isn’t a brand new utility or idea, but I did want to ’spread the word’ of this excellent program.
Hamachi is a service that runs in the background and connects your computer to any other computer you wish in a particular network. This creates an encrypted VPN (Virtual Private Network) between you and other PCs in your own network.
This becomes ultra convenient when you have a number of PCs that you want to connect to, for example if you have a work PC, home PC, school PC and/or servers. Once Hamachi is installed, the computers are available via IP address for their file shares, or any other service. Lots of people also use to play video games in a multi-player mode regardless of their location.
| I’m sure most of you have heard of emulation somewhere. So what is it exactly? |
Wikipedia says that “an emulator duplicates the functions of one system, using a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system.” This means that we can make our PC mimic a specific system, which thereby enables us to run those system-specific games on our computers.
In this series, we’ll take a closer look at the software needed to run PSX, PS2 and Xbox games on your PC. This time we’ll discuss Sony’s Playstation (PSX) and the ePSXe emulation software.
Games can cost you quite a buck. Some games cost a lot, most of them even more. This isn’t always the case, though; sometimes they don’t even cost anything at all!
Actually, there are a lot of free games available. When we’re talking about shooters (read: games in which you shoot stuff and/or living things) these are nearly always multiplayer games.
Read on for the top five free online shooters.
Google Desktop has so many excellent – and highly useful – features. It’s easily my favorite tool for indexing the massive amount of data I keep scattered around the various folders on my computer, and it’s a lot less painful than actually taking the time to sort everything myself.
It really is a tremendous productivity booster and deserves a place on any serious professional’s desktop - if not for the usefulness, then why not for some less-serious, completely fun gadgets!
You probably use Firefox. Why? Probably because you’re a smart cookie and you know that it’s faster, more secure, and all that jazz. Well, I’ve grown tired of that. I want Firefox to be the most fun browser to use. I want to trick people into getting blown up with my browser!
What? I can do that? With PMOG, it’s possible!
PMOG, which stands for “Passively Multiplayer Online Game,” is a 200k browser add-on for Firefox that makes social browsing a lot more fun and interesting. Sign up and install the toolbar and you’re on your way to underhanded online fun. How does it work?
I don’t know about you but I’m not much into fancy-pants 3D first person shooters. I can’t be bothered to build a massive gaming rig, blow $500 on a video card, and figure out what custom weights give me the best mouse response.
I’ve got a WII, and I love it, and one of the big reasons I do is for the emulation. Sadly however, I can’t bring my WII to work or to the coffee shop down the street - but I can bring my laptop, jump on their WiFi and fire up these four awesome sites for a quick old school gaming fix!
There are thousands and thousands of applications available for Linux, and even more being developed as you read this. As much as I love Linux and Open Source, sometimes you happen to love a Windows application so much that you wonder if only this was available on Linux I would completely switch. It has happened to me in the past when I would switch over into Windows to play Counter Strike and Half Life and some people also wanted Photoshop on Linux because the GIMP requires some adjusting to on the interface.
After hearing so much about the Yahoo acquisition bid and the Google monopoly predictions lately, I suddenly an urge to play a bit of world domination myself.
If you’ve ever played Risk, the classic take-over-the-world board game then you will know its no fun playing with less then three people, or even setting up to play at all. So I decided to have a bit of a look for a good - and free - game of Risk on the Internet.
After sorting through a couple of pages of Google searches wanting us to buy the official PC version of Risk I came across some nice unofficial alternatives for you to play.
When you think of Linux, you probably think of open source software and security, but not gaming. Most people think if you are into gaming, Windows is your only option. A few years ago this might have been the case but not anymore.
So, if you are a Linux power user, or just prefer Linux, here are a few of your options for playing games on your Linux box.
| The greatest luxury of our time is time itself. Thus it’s a deadly sin to simply waste it. As we all know time is relative and the more fun you have, the faster time passes. Being bored is the most cruel way to waste time. So, in our quest to happiness, I advise you never to be bored, always be occupied and busy, and most of all, enjoy what you’re doing! |
These are my TOP 5 in covering time gaps with more joy and less boredom:
(1) Ask 500 People
I’m sure most of you have heard of Second Life (SL) before. In case you haven’t, let me give you a very short overview of what we’re talking about. Second Life is a 3D virtual world, entirely created by its inhabitants (residents). In SL you will find almost everything you know from your Real or First Life (RL), and more.
It works much like a game; you sign up for a basic (free) or premium account, install the software (viewer) on your computer, start to form your personal character, you can explore the world, interact with other residents, play your role within the game, create things, receive things other residents have created and so on.
I did some research on iPhone specific websites and found out, to my surprise, that there were quite a few out there. Aibek has covered iiPhone web apps before, but here’s a small list of more websites specifically designed for the beautiful iPhone.
Information / News Web Apps :
CBS News: www.cbsnews.com/iphone
Fox News: iphone.foxnews.com
Google: Google.com
Reuters Mobile: mobile.reuters.com
BrainyQuote: www.brainyquote.com/iphone.html
Social Apps :
Digg: www.digg.com/iphone
Facebook: iphone.Facebook.com
Twitter: m.twitter.com/login
Reference:
Wikipedia: www.keishi.net/ipodia/
People Finder: www.2robots.com/iphone/#_ByNumber
Urban Dictionary: www.idotg.com/apps/iwurd.php
Realtor: iphone.realtor.com
Weather Web Apps :
AccuWeather: apple.accuweather.com/widget/iphone1/iphone.html
Weather Underground: i.wund.com
Weather.com: www.weather.com/iphone
Just a short post today to let you know about a really cool site that we should all probably be watching.
“Giveaway of the Day” literally gives away a real, fully-licensed software download every single day. Some are really cool…some are “not-so” (to me, anyway…but hey…that’s why they’ve got chocolate, strawberry and vanilla, right?)
For you game-players, they also give away one Game every day!
I’m guessing that updates and support might be limited on these free downloads, but…you know the old saying… “you get what you pay for”… and I’m ok with that when it’s really cool and it’s free.
When I was a young kiddie and the apple of my mother’s eye, I would spend part of my Saturday mornings watching Swap Shop on TV. Swap Shop was presented by British cheeky chappie Noel Edmonds and people would come on the show to swap their trading cards for a GI Joe, or their little brother in exchange for Yoda, and so on. Fast-forward twenty-five years and we now have more or less the same concept online.
NOTE: These sites are pre-dominantly US sites although it may be possible to register a non-US address. Check each site for details.
Poor Yahoo. Once the unassailable giant of the internet that could do no wrong, it has been constantly overshadowed by the big kid on the block (you know who it is, starts with a G, ends in an E…..). Once I thought Yahoo Mail and I would live together for ever and produce lots of healthy email but then Gmail stole my heart away…..
But all is not lost for Yahoo. People love to put them down but I still love them and they are still a mighty force to be reckoned with. Here’s why:
(1) Del.icio.us
Scrabulous is an awesome Facebook application/game, which is Scrabble, allowing multiple games with multiple Facebook Friends. As of right now, Scrabulous has climbed to #6 in the Top Facebook Applications for “Most Activity”. Currently there are 178,120 daily active users (29%) — 2,674 reviews. The great features of the application are as follows:
Following Mark’s post Play games online with ItsYourTurn.com, it made me realize that I’ve been using free web games for the past 5 years through Yahoo! Games. However, by games, I really mean that my game of choice is WordRacer.
“Word Racer is an exciting, fun, and fast word game where up to eight players compete by creating words from various grids made up of letters. Once a player finds a word, no other players can use that word.”
I’m sure you’ve all seen the scenes in movies and television shows where one person makes a move on the chess board and then lets someone know over the phone (or by letter) what their move was. It may be many weeks or months later that the other person finally makes their move and in this way, they make the game go on for years, one move at a time.
Now it’s possible to do this online too.
In case you got some time to kill, or simply prefer to ‘productively’ kill your office hours, than here you go: five very popular, mind-challenging and fairly addictive games on the web.
(1) Desktop Tower Defence - highly addictive, challenging and very popular puzzle/strategy game where you have to protect your desktop from creeps (invaders) by building a labyrinth-like maze along with firing towers on the walls. Finding the right places for the firing towers is the main key here.
Your typing speed sucks? Too much typos? You feel like getting better but too lazy to go through touch typing courses and would prefer playing some games instead. If that’s Yes, Yes and Yes, here is something you would want to check out. Bunch of fun and addictive games to boost your typing speed.
QWERTY Wariors
fun 2D shooter game, where in order to shoot the bad guy you have to type the word appearing underneath him.
.
.
TyperShark
same story here, stay safe by typing right word for each shark
.
.
