Octopus Overlords

Kelric wrote:

El Guapo wrote:YES! Here I Stand, anyway - I don't have the Virgin Queen. And I don't care if people know the period.

Maybe if I ever have a weekend away from the family I'll try to put that together.

I don't know what either of them are, but I bet I'd enjoy them....

You'd enjoy them *all night long*, if you know what I mean.

Which is, to be specific, that they take a very long time to play.

And you basically have to have six people, and they all ideally have to have read chunks of the 50+ page rules.

One day, we will play Here I Stand. One day.

After finishing Dragon's Dogma, I looked for reviews of the Monster Hunter games since I heard they were similar. I found this video review in which the gaming personality Egoraptor tries to review Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate after having eating a habanero pepper. He is in so much pain, it's as if the pepper broke something inside of him.

Turns out there is a whole channel, Hot Pepper Gaming, in which people eat extremely hot peppers and then try to review games. It strikes me as a stupid and risky stunt, like the current ice bucket challenge craze. And I can't stop watching!

I just noticed that Kickstarter has a "Find Friends" option that will show backings by all of your Facebook people.

That's how I discovered that my sister is in for 270 projects after just over a year. WTH, sis??

Holman wrote:I just noticed that Kickstarter has a "Find Friends" option that will show backings by all of your Facebook people.

That's how I discovered that my sister is in for 270 projects after just over a year. WTH, sis??

Damn. Hope my wife never finds that!

El Guapo wrote:

Holman wrote:My boardgame dream is someday to enjoy a full six-player game of Here I Stand or Virgin Queen with people who know the period. I fear this will never happen.

YES! Here I Stand, anyway - I don't have the Virgin Queen. And I don't care if people know the period.

Maybe if I ever have a weekend away from the family I'll try to put that together.

Okay, so I just noticed this half a year later but count me in. I own Virgin Queen and have read half the rules so I'm about as ready as I'll ever be.

Archinerd wrote:

El Guapo wrote:

Holman wrote:My boardgame dream is someday to enjoy a full six-player game of Here I Stand or Virgin Queen with people who know the period. I fear this will never happen.

YES! Here I Stand, anyway - I don't have the Virgin Queen. And I don't care if people know the period.

Maybe if I ever have a weekend away from the family I'll try to put that together.

Okay, so I just noticed this half a year later but count me in. I own Virgin Queen and have read half the rules so I'm about as ready as I'll ever be.

Oh, I would love to, but I don't actually own either game. My boardgaming budget has shrunk.

Maybe someday.

How's this for random?

I've been working on converting my old gaming rig to run either Win98 or XP (whichever is actually compatible with the hardware), in order to play any games that run poorly or not at all in Win7. One such game runs on an emulator that hasn't been updated for a few years and is so obscure it has no Wikipedia page. It's an old text adventure from 1983: Castle Dracula for the Texas Instruments TI99/4a.

I only know about it through my mother, who remembered playing it many years ago. I don't know very much about it either; my mother recalled that the plot involved being bitten by a vampire, with only a few days remaining before you would be turned. It took a lot of digging to find a .rom for the game, since she couldn't remember the title. As it turns out, the original has been lost; the game's creator Paul Johnson had to recreate it from scratch.

Unfortunately, it only runs on an abandoned emulator, V9t9run, which doesn't get along with Win7. I suspect it won't live up to my imagination, as I have wondered about this game for years. I wasn't around to experience gaming in the 80's, so if anyone has any nostalgia for the TI99/4a or the games of Mr. Johnson (of which there are several), please weigh in.

A fun round of Forbidden Island always ends with tension. This was a bit much.


We had a water level of 5 and I was standing on a tile that I sandbagged just before it was flipped and sunk, which sent me automatically to the last tile left. An airlift was used immediately.

I think I'm going to storage in a few days and bring back two huge storage totes I have there. One is full of CD cases for games, the other is full of collapsed PC game boxes. There are probably hundreds of each, going clear back to the 90s. Hell, the boxes from the first PC games I ever bought are probably in there. I kept them originally because I didn't have that many. Later it was because people preferred the complete product when The Trading Place (remember that?) on GG and the Trading Forum on OO were actually used. There has also always been this corner of my mind that imagined getting huge bookshelves in a gaming room and storing all of my PC games in their original boxes. That'd be awesome, but let's be honest - other than a couple of collectors' editions, I haven't seen a physical game box (or a disk) in years. I can just put books on the shelf and frame a screenshot of Steam.

Still, I love those boxes. It is a form of product that doesn't exist anymore. I remember standing in Electronics Boutique looking at them - the big old boxes with the fold out flaps. I remember buying many of them, and the joy that came from having my (then) wife drive so I could open them up, check out the catalogs, maps, manuals, and surprises that were always inside. I love those boxes.

Still, think it is time to get rid of them.

I'll probably keep a few. A couple that were gifts or have special memories. I've still got a big-box, fully intact copy of Deus Ex that I won't get rid of, as well as 'complimentary' copies of a couple of games I wrote the manuals for. Those stay (and have never been in storage.)

That reminds me - I never did get a copy of the crappy Axis & Allies PC game I did the manual for back in 2004.

The Pinball Arcade has rekindled my lusty passions for pinball, so much so that I've started listening to pinball podcasts. One of these podcasts, simply named The Pinball Podcast, is hosting a bracket tournament for best pinball game, just like the ones we've done for videotronic electrocomputer games.

They're doing two brackets, one for modern pinball and one for classic pinball. (I'm not sure what the cutoff is, but I'm guessing modern is any pinball with a dot matrix display, which could go as far back as the early 90s.) They're down to the championship round in both brackets:

Modern Bracket
AC/DC vs The Addams Family

Classics Bracket
Whirlwind vs Taxi

I've no familiarity with AC/DC, but I think Addams Family will win. Between Whirlwind and Taxi, I think Whirlwind will win (though I strongly prefer Taxi).

Sad to see that my favorite pinball machine ever (Xenon) got knocked out in the second round.

hentzau wrote:Sad to see that my favorite pinball machine ever (Xenon) got knocked out in the second round.

By a frigging pool table game of all things.

Well, I did it.

I needed an empty tote. I couldn't afford an empty tote, but I had a couple I couldn't justify using anymore. I hauled them over, went through them, and threw away the box and jewel case to nearly every retail game in my collect prior to a few years ago when retail stopped happening. There were probably 200 of each, going back to the 90s. I'd kept them around back when the trading forum was actually for trading and a box and case were desirable. I think I also had a pipe dream of someday having a place big enough to put my games out on shelves - but hell, most of my collection is digital now.

It was a sad process. I kept a couple of boxes - Thief Gold, Baldur's Gate II, and one jewel case (Lords of the Realm II, the first PC game I ever actually bought.) They live in the trash can now. In a few days they'll take the lonely ride to the dump.

Alas.

/edit - holy crap, I posted almost this same thing four months ago as a 'need to do.' I have no memory of doing so.

I flattened all my boxes. So I just have the outsides. I definitely never had the room to keep everything. I do keep all the manuals, of course. Now all the covers are in one tote in the garage.

That was what I did. I put all of my CDs into binders, took the front covers from the jewel cases and put those in the binders, too. I put the empty jewel cases in one box (after copying all of the necessary keys into a document.) I took all of the contents (cardboard structure, flyers, etc) from the boxes and folded them flat in another. All of the manuals are safe and sound. Those I'm keeping.

I do have a few that I keep in the boxes on a shelf - a few collectors' editions, plus a few games I wrote for. Those I'm keeping intact.

TheMix wrote:I flattened all my boxes. So I just have the outsides. I definitely never had the room to keep everything. I do keep all the manuals, of course. Now all the covers are in one tote in the garage.

I still have two small filing cabinets of manuals that I should probably divorce myself of. I can't remember the last time I broke out the DVD game binder much less dug into the manuals.

But then I also have two huge tool cabinets full thing like Serial Mice and NICs and SVGA video cards and I don't even remember what else any more because I haven't dug in there for a decade either.

I just made myself get rid of a 28k modem a few months ago.

I should probably dump the half-dozen 56k modems, too.

I'm really excited about Flick 'Em Up after hearing Tom Vasel gush about it on the Dice Tower podcast and video review.

It's an Old West-themed dexterity flicking game for up to 10 players in which the good guys/bad guys face off in various Western scenarios. You flick your discs to move around the various obstacles (cacti, barrels, buildings) that are set up for the scenario, and take shots trying to knock out your opponents.

What I found neat about the game is that the mechanics are very highly themed. For instance, there is a rifle that is actually a card you put around your disc that allows you to flick it straighter. And old West duels are modeled by a face off in which each person takes a shot at his opponent. Misses mean the opponent gets to move up and take a shot back at you from closer range. Other solid mechanics ensure nobody goes crazy with the flicking. For example, if you want to move to a spot on the map but accidentally hit an obstacle, your move fails. In this way, the game rewards very precise shots.

All the components are wooden (hell, even the game comes in a wooden box), so the quality sounds amazingly high. This is the first game by Pretzel Games, which is a spin-off of Z-Man Games which plans to publish more casual, "play while eating" type games. MSRP is $70 but you can find pre-orders under $50 right now; I'm definitely in. Set to release by end of Q3, but most websites are showing July 30/August.

YellowKing wrote:I'm really excited about Flick 'Em Up after hearing Tom Vasel gush about it on the Dice Tower podcast and video review.

It's an Old West-themed dexterity flicking game for up to 10 players in which the good guys/bad guys face off in various Western scenarios. You flick your discs to move around the various obstacles (cacti, barrels, buildings) that are set up for the scenario, and take shots trying to knock out your opponents.

What I found neat about the game is that the mechanics are very highly themed. For instance, there is a rifle that is actually a card you put around your disc that allows you to flick it straighter. And old West duels are modeled by a face off in which each person takes a shot at his opponent. Misses mean the opponent gets to move up and take a shot back at you from closer range. Other solid mechanics ensure nobody goes crazy with the flicking. For example, if you want to move to a spot on the map but accidentally hit an obstacle, your move fails. In this way, the game rewards very precise shots.

All the components are wooden (hell, even the game comes in a wooden box), so the quality sounds amazingly high. This is the first game by Pretzel Games, which is a spin-off of Z-Man Games which plans to publish more casual, "play while eating" type games. MSRP is $70 but you can find pre-orders under $50 right now; I'm definitely in. Set to release by end of Q3, but most websites are showing July 30/August.

Flicking? Old West???

HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS?!?!

Ok... having looked at the BGG page, I think it may be worth the relatively low cost for the pieces alone!

I placed an order with my FLGS for it. I could save probably about $15 if I ordered it from CSI, but I haven't ordered from them for a while and I like to support them when I can.

The man... um... nerd... um game geek cave we all wish we had

http://www.ultanya.com/2015/02/introduc ... avern.html

That's awesome.

UFS: Universal Fighting System by Jasco Games. Does anyone know it? Is it worthwhile?

So Games Workshop is causing a bit of a stir with their revamp of Warhammer Fantasy. Shut Up and Sit Down has a great write up on all the weirdness.

Wow. I mean, really wow. I was a big Warhammer Fantasy fan back in the 90s, but gave up on Games WOrkshop when they went off the deep end in the 2000s. Now, though. It is like worrying about a friend because he stopped bathing, and the next thing you know he's burying half-eaten bodies in the yard.

GW, you crazy.

Maybe the movie is a step towards going all-fluff? GW would rather be Marvel than TSR?

Cardboard Hoarders: Meet the UK's Most Obsessive Board Game Collectors

Board games are big business. Geek culture has gone mainstream through the painfully trite filter of The Big Bang Theory. Suppressed memories of endless, bitter games of Monopoly have been transformed into nostalgia. Last year London's first board game café, "Draughts," opened after raising over £20,000 [$31,000] on Kickstarter. Crowdfunding has been huge for the industry; as I write this, table top games are raking in thousands.

Evidently there's a lot of money being spent on little laser-cut plywood people and hypothetical livestock trading right now. And there are some really weird games on the market—from Antler Island, where you encourage Scottish deer to rut, to Barbarossa, which sees you guide anime Nazi schoolgirls to conquer a wizard version of Stalin. But who are the cardboard zealots buying in to all this, and why?

Where others might see something pathetic, I see something great. Viva la return to truly social gaming!

This weekend is boardgame weekend for me. And I am certainly looking forward to it.

hepcat wrote:Where others might see something pathetic, I see something great. Viva la return to truly social gaming!

I don't only enjoy the social aspects, it's a way to get your gaming fix without staring at a damn screen. Between phone, computer, tablet, television, I feel like 95% of my waking day is spent staring at a screen. It's to the point recently that aside from a couple of Grim Dawn sessions, I haven't been video gaming at all.

Well, since the update wiped all of my data from Cooking Dash, that's one fewer game on my phone to worry about.

Moliere wrote:

hepcat wrote:

Moliere wrote:

Zarathud is in his bunk.

I KNEW there was something fishy about Wealth of Nations!

hepcat wrote:I KNEW there was something fishy about Wealth of Nations!

That was my master plan to get you all to solve global economics. As it turns out, spilling Mountain Dew all over a brand new game board is the equivalent of an economic bubble....

What's the difference between a kickstarter and a crowd funded?