We rejoin our hero as he continues his journey of 1001 video games. This time location has changed…. Instead of the confinements of the World Wide Web, we find that we have been emerged into a whole other world. Filled with elves, humans, gnomes, dwarfs.

Instead of a one or two player game, we dive into a game that is filled with millions and millions of people around the globe, Playing the game that has sucked up so many man hours and eaten away so many nights of a gamers life.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the stats from the trial I played.

14 hrs 58 mins 7 secs

Name: Linusthemeek

Race: Human

Class: Warrior

Level: 20

This is my character:

Now Close your eyes:

Im on a horse! Sorry i couldnt resist that

See that first line? 14 hours 58 mins and 7 seconds. A mere 113 seconds away from 15 hours. Now let me clarify that this was not in a row. This was spread out of just under a week. I have been wanting to play World of Warcraft again for a while now. I used to play for a while and stopped. Life got in the way, Not that I really minded. I joined a trial again, to stop me from getting reacquainted with my old character. This was a 14 day trial that I maxed out level wise in less than a week. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it. Just didn’t do much for my itch. Oh well. Its fine I have 982 more games to play!

So if you have been living under a rock or don’t play video games World of Warcraft is easily one of the most popular, most played Massively Multiplayer Online games that is available to play. Entering its 7^th year of existence, It is on its 3^rd expansion with a 4^th announced but even the developers don’t know what it is going to be about. With a staggering 62% of the market share in MMO it holds the Guinness Book of world record for most popular MMO. This is the game that new MMO’s look to for what to do.

It takes place in a Fantasy setting featuring all the things one would expect. Kings, soldiers, wizards, elves, orges, Giants.

Timing based battling and a list of quests a mile long for users to complete to gain experience in hopes of maxing out at levels currently the max level is 85 this seems to and has increased with every release. This game is not one you can beat. There is always something for you to do, no matter the level. You start out playing on your own, thinking pffft I got this. But soon you realize that you can level up all you want however you are still going to need help. This is where joining a guild comes in. Hence the multiplayer comes in. However with certain tiers of level gainage you receive new skills and even the ability to buy a mount to ride or fly on. Keeps you hooked and coming back for more.

With the game costing 20 – 40 bucks per disc and a 15 dollar a month subscription fee its not exactly a cheap hobby option but compared to a system with games that have ends it looks a little better.

Chachi Says: This game will suck time out of your life. You sit down to play for an hour or so and blam! 4 hours later you may still be sitting there. Its a ton of fun though. Give it a shot. But dont hope on playing right away. 5 hours of updates will keep you waiting at the beginning.

Also! This weeks chachi says is up!!!!!

i talk video games and Dragon!

Well, I hate to break it to you but you cant be a super hero in that sense. You can out and make the world a better place, but it doesn’t involve costumes and incredible powers. Lets face it this is the real world and if you rolled around in nuclear waste you’d probably die or something.

BUT through the power of Video games, you too can be a super hero or villain depending on your real life alignment.

This is My Super hero: Captain Awesome No Pants. The name was too long for the game so they shortened it to Captain Awesome NP. Still kind of catchy.

So City of Heroes/Villians is exactly that. The story goes as such:

Paragon City is a fictitious city located in Rhode Island in the United States. The city itself is divided into several smaller neighborhoods that have varying villains and progressively higher levels of villains within them. The arbitrary divisions between zones are explained by the presence of “War Walls”, powerful forcefields derived from alien technology which are used to defend various areas of the city. Heroes set out by dealing with low-powered street gangs in the initial zones, working their way up to fighting increasingly dangerous threats—such as organised crime, corrupt corporations, hostile aliens and supernatural terrors—even eventually entering other dimensions to fight supremely powerful villains.

Like many other games before it, it has won a ton of awards but nothing incredibly awesome that deserves mention. Except a most improved award. The game was released in April 27, 2004. It continues to have expansions and increase the level cap and exploreable areas.

In my experience it took just as long to install as World of Warcraft did. the only differences what so ever is the theme and difficulty. Heroes is a tougher game than wow. I spent 30 mins or so leveling so that I could complete the first real mission. Getting gang banged by radicals is not fun yo. Everything about this game is more in depth. Character creation is like woah. it took a good 20 mins to create the character and that’s not counting the costume design. Picking powers, background move set. extensive. Here is my super hero id though.

Chachi Says: When all said and done, I kind of want to be an already established super hero. It made me feel like a cheap male knock off of storm when I was done, and trust me it didn’t have the same effect.

To say that this game was the first MMORPG would technically be a lie. There have been other mmo’s. This was the biggest and first recognized MMO. Released in 1997. Holds 8 Guinness World records included: First MMO to reach 100,000. Longest running MMO. And i havent verified this yet however im pretty sure that it’s the mmo to have a player set a world record. “First and Only Person to Kill Lord British”, which was done by a player named Rainz during a server reset which turned off his invulnerability.

King British is an NPC he is an in game Persona of the series Creator.  There are a lot of story lines that evolve around or start with this character so he normally is not one that any character can out right kill. According to wiki though there are ways to set up a death of King British in every expansion. Some you can rig a plaque to fall on him, you can poison his bread etc etc etc.

So i started playing this game.

first off, it installed a lot quicker than most mmo which threw me off, Until i started playing.

The graphics in this game are right where they started. In 1997.

It wasnt what i expected but i played on.

I played for 2 hours. and for 2 hours i did escort missions. if you know me or if you are a nerd, then you know, NERDS HATE ESCORT MISSIONS!!!!!!!!!!

After two hours of learning the unorthodox commands and escorting people all over the area i stopped playing.

The game however has to be given respect. It got there first. #1. The other games had to prove themselves in comparison to this game.

They have since released countless expansions and have updated the graphics in the newer versions. its still a top down but they have been cleaned up and sharper.

You can try a free 14 day free trial of the original or the new one over here at http://www.uoherald.com/ . Give it a shot. cant hurt to visit the past.

Chachi Says: That game is responsible for where we are in the world of mmo. No matter how good or how bad that world turns out to be, this game led the way! Give it a shot!

Disclaimer: UO is not sponsoring this post nor probably knows im doing it. But if they want too that would be awesome!

Do you like Diplomacy, Trade, Resources, Combat, Industry, Economy, Science? or rather, Do you like controlling these things? Do you like playing Risk? Only in space, conquering stars?

Do you want a game to obsess about, constantly check to make moves knowing damn well that its not your turn yet?

God I love the smell of Conquest in the Morning! This is the game for you!

Pack your space suit, And hop in the space hoopty, hit the switches, and show your space colors it gang territory war time!

Neptune’s Pride is an online flash game that pits you up against 7 other players. The goal using diplomacy and battle. Be the first to conquer half the stars in this galaxy. You use science to increase your technology. this increases both battle techniques and ship power. Diplomacy helps you from getting destroyed quickly when you accident conquer a star in someone else’s unmarked section of the Universe! Hi, mind putting up a fence or something sheesh.  if you like civilization but don’t have 8 hours to spend on a marathon game of it, this game is for you. Set it and forget! you’ll get email updates telling you when a cycle has been completed and you can log back in and take a look.

Its not a bad game to play, but if you are looking for instant entertainment, this is not the game for you. Still decently fun.

Game 16: Captain Forever

As I said earlier both games are space related and as nerds we have a duty to at least try the game. Nerds are attracted to space like a mouse to cheese. Well this game is not graphics heavy. Also the only goal is to stay alive for as long as possible.   This is one of the best features of flash games on the internet.

You take a short break from what ever you’re working on and you start playing the game. If you last a while then you stop when you need to refocus, if you die after 10 mins, no big deal, You regain focus on whatever it is you’re working on. Win Win Win.

Captain forever is a game where you pilot a command center of a ship. The point? Destroy other ships and attach their parts to yours in order to create a better ship! Boom, win! Run and Gun, Run and Gun. Red 5, This is Red 6 prepare to engage the enemy.

The controls are simple to learn and you quickly learn how to balance the ship because failure to do so will mean that your ship will not stay on the planned course and you will find yourself veering to the heavier side.

Chachi Says: The internet is full of time wasters. in fact thats what the internet was made for. Ten minute time wasters. Great stuff.  So, its time for some feed back! Are you enjoying this? is there places i can improve on? looking for your thoughts on this!

Hello again! I know it seems as if we are just chugging along through this journey, but I assure you they wont always be up this quick, its just easy to get a quick assessment on the last 14 games because of the types of games they are.

Game 13: Quadradius

This game is available over at http://www.quadradius.com. Two man team and they’ve gotten some pretty good reviews from some big sites in the 5 years they’ve been around.

Now, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of an accurate description to tell you all what this game could be compared too or what it is. The only thing that I could think of for it was Futuristic Space Checkers!

Each player starts with 20 “checkers” on an 8 by 10 board. The object? Capture all of your opponents pieces. However, there is no diagonal moving, you can move forward backwards and side to side one square at a time. They also drop “powers” or power ups around the board to well obviously to give you powers to use to destroy your opponents pieces. There are no kings or anything equal to that so move where ever you have to, in order to straight pwn your opponents n00b a$$ and all that jazz. Now the game lets you play as a guest which lets you experience the full game, however you can also sign up for a subscription which takes away the name length limit and the GUEST it adds to whatever you type in. Just like all competitive web games you will have to deal with players that take their sweet ass time in hopes of boosting their stats with an easy win. Enjoyable for a while but I wouldnt pay for a subscription. However, I am only one person. Give it a shot.

Game 14: Desktop Tower Defense.

This game was launched in March of 07, and surprising made 100k off of 40 m loads in the first year. Makes me wish I was a game coder…. The game is so simple yet so addicting. You can get lost for a few hours.

Anyhow, The game goes as such, Desktop TD is a fun flash based puzzle / strategy game where you have to protect your desktop from invaders by spending money on attacking pieces and building a maze for them to follow. Strangely addictive yet stress relieving… how many levels can you survive?

Weapon placement and upgrading is key to longevity. This game was a huge influence on tower defense games to come. A game in which graphics really dont matter because people will play. This game still gets a pretty decent amount of hits on a per hour basis. You can go to http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/News.asp and view the up to date stats for each hour.

Statastic Stats for the last hour Current Number of Players: 191 Games Played: 1071Scores Submited: 42 Towers built: 0.05 MillionCreeps killed: 0.9 Million, this is from the hour I was writing this. Noon, on 3-4-11.

Chachi Says: sometimes the simplest game can suck you in. You’ll keep trying and trying until you run out of time. Then you may come back, you may not. either way, these games served their purposes.

Game 11: Grow

This has turned into an entire series of games. The goal is to take the beginning surface and use the given items to advance or grow the game. usually its the shape of a planet or cube. but has grown to a full blown rpg.

You can check it out here. http://www.eyezmaze.com/

This is a puzzle game if you couldnt tell. you can only advance in the game and have hopes of completing the growth process. Did i beat the game? yes. after 20 or so attempts.

I once again couldn’t find a history of this game. i know it was developed by a foreign developer around 2002 but not positive.

Game 12: Cursor *10

So, i did a whole section of games that were all text, hope you remember that considering i just finished the posting a few days ago! Well you can imagine my surprise when i found an immediate relative to these games. graphics wise at least. No colors. well Black and white, but thats it.

Now this game despite the looks, and we all know that looks are not everything. Despite the looks its quite challenging and entertaining. Now in most video games, its for the better if you can go as long as possible without losing any lives. This game however requires you to lose at points. Because this introduces the concept of playing a multiplayer game….. by yourself.  In order to progress through the game, you need to cooperate with former selves which they show concurrent with present you.  This has to happen or you cannot progress through the game. It’s puzzling and a lot of fun, at first. however it can get frustrating.

Once again theres no real history posted(or at least in a language i can understand.)

Chachi Says: these games succeed because they are the perfect time killers. Have ten minutes? check out this game before that next conference call! WARNING: i am not responsible or encouraging you to play these at work.

Don’t get me wrong, the text adventures were a great mental exercise but that many in a row will mess with your head.

So we move on. The next session I have is Online/MMO games! online meaning that they are games that are hosted on web pages across the web.

Game 9: Line Rider.

Line rider is a simple flash game(since moved to silver light as well) The game is as follows. Draw the course, press play and see if the rider can make through the course. Simple enough right? Nah, not really. Who wants to draw an easy course with just bumps and hills? No one. Hence the challenge. You draw crazy tracks and see if your little sled riding buddy can make the course. This all of course run by a physics simulator.

The game was created in 2006 By Bostjan Cadez a Slovenian student. First appeared on Deviant art where it blew up. it has appeared on yahoo, time magazine, Games for Windows The Official magazine and even in a McDonalds Snack Wrap commercial. This game has been updated 2 times since the original once to silver light and then later to incorporate new features. This game though is a bragging rights type of game. It allows you to export the tracks and send them to others or to post them on the webpage for public viewing. It was fun for me for about 20 mins. Then I lost interest.

Game 10: Fantastic Contraption.

This game is another game that uses a physics simulator.  The goal of this game is to create a contraption to move an item into the designated square.

Simple enough right? sometimes, its straight forward, other times, you have to build the most ridiculous contraptions you can think of to climb over/knock over walls. Using the limited parts: Front moving wheel, back moving wheel, manual wheel, wood beam and water beam. believe it or not you can build some crazy stuff with those parts.

The only history i can find on this game is that on January 16, 2009 it made its way into the app store for iphone and was released there by inexile Entertainment. I know thats not where it got its start but thats all they said.

Chachi Says: These games are a perfect way to blow off 15-20 minutes online on break. Give them a shot! www.linerider.com and www.fantasticcontraption.com you wont be disappointed.

Game 8: Eamon

Now this game, this game was epic for its time. This was the social media of Text adventures. Dont follow me? Dont worry, ill explain soon enough.

Here is the story:

Eamon casts the player in the role of a free-wheeling fantasy adventurer who undertakes dangerous quests against numerous enemies in order to earn riches and experience. Home base is the Guild of Free Adventurers, an association of heroes on the mystical world of Eamon, a vaguely Medieval place awash in magic and populated with strange creatures. Most adventures take place in the dungeons, castles and forests of Eamon, though some occur on other worlds or in different eras.

Though influenced by such fantasy environments as The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, Eamon generally avoids stories, situations or other game elements that are particularly serious or complex, instead seeking to create an engaging, genial mood through quick play and in-jokes. Individual adventures, created by a wide range of authors, vary from the artful to the campy.

So this story gave you the settings. Place environment. etc. You gave it a character. Created by you customized by you. it was yours. To put it simply this game was the computer version of D&D. If your character died, gone. there were tools to ressurect it but you couldnt always count on that. there were general storys on the main disk called the  “Main Hall” used to manage your characters and play preloaded stories. Here is where the social media part came in. Others could give you adventures to run with your character. there are over 260 documented authors for these adventures and probably more that werent public. Innovation at its greatest. Released in 1980 forthe Apple II and atari.  Developed by Donald Brown and is and always was Free Domain.

This game was redone in 1999 for windows and is available on the iphone through ibasic.

Chachi Says: Thus endeth the Text adventures part of this journey. You ahve to know where youve been before you can figure out where we are going. Great fun. and the next section will be Online games. Which will be games 9-20! stay tuned! Tell me what you think so far! im interested in your thoughts and experiences with these games!

Anyhow here are games 6 and 7. i grouped these two together for a couple of reasons. I didnt want the last post to be any longer, god knows it was long as hell. also, these two games are similar, moreso than being text adventures i mean in storyline themes. Both released by Infocom in 1985 and 1986 respectively.

Game 6: A Mind Forever Voyaging.

The story for this one:

The player controls PRISM, the world’s first sentient computer, in the year 2031. The economy of the United States of North America (USNA) is failing. Great numbers of youths are turning to “Joybooths” (a device which directly stimulates the sensory input of the brain) and committing suicide by overstimulation. A new arms race involving nuclear weapons no larger than the size of a common pack of cigarettes threatens to turn the USNA into a police state.

However after playing the game for a while you realize that you are no more than a test subject, testing a plan to revitalize the way the goverment and industry are behaving. Able to record instances and view them later. All being used to determine if this plan will save the way of life as they know it. Pretty deep political stuff huh?

No screen shot for once again as on par with infocom it was white on black. but being an infocom game they included bonuses!

heres the packaged goods!

• A printed copy of Dakota Online Magazine from April, 2031, featuring an article about “Perry Simm”/PRISM
• An advertisement presented by the “Joybooth Manufacturers of North America” arguing that “Joybooths are not the problem”
• A “PRISM Project Facility Class One Security Mode Access Decoder”, a paper wheel device that provided access codes needed in-game
• A map of Rockvil, “Jewel of the Quad-State Area” (the quad-state area consisting of South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming)
• A ballpoint pen from QUAD Mutual Insurance. (“From seafarms to spacelabs, you’re covered by QUAD.”)

Game 7: Trinity

This game also white on black focuses on the Nuclear Arms development a hot topic for the time.

As the game begins, the player’s character is spending a final day of a London vacation in the Kensington Gardens. The evening flight back to the United States is looking increasingly unlikely for a number of unusual reasons. Hordes of nannies are blocking all exits from the Gardens, and the grass actively resists efforts to be walked upon. Worst of all, a gleam on the horizon soon heralds the unwelcome arrival of a Soviet nuclear missile. Time begins to slow as the missile approaches, and with some ingenuity the player’s character finds an incongruous door hovering in mid-air. There’s no telling where it may lead, but it can’t possibly be worse than the alternative of being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation.

You spend time in a alternate space time continuum visiting all the nuclear test sites moments before the bomb drops, literally. Until you realize that something is going to go wrong at test site alpha. ( Trinity, New Mexico 1945) This game includes Fictional and Historical bomb testing sites for your exploration.

The bonuses included for this game were as such:

• A map of the Trinity site
• A cardboard sundial marked with odd symbols
• The Illustrated Story of the Atom Bomb, an “educational” comic book laden with ironic statements regarding the feelings of patriotism, idealism, and jingoism surrounding the production of atomic weaponry
• Instructions on how to fold an origamicrane (a reference to Sadako Sasaki)

Chachi Says: Only 1 more to go! Political themes to me are not as fun as the fantasy realm given to me by the others but definitely worth 30 minutes of your time or more!