Oh my goodness, take a look at this. You like to play the old fashioned boardgames like Settlers of Catan? Yet you don’t want to appear as the oldtimer that you actually are? Maybe you should go OLED like some researchers of the Queens University did. Digital game pieces rock the world. Check the article on cnet and watch this great video. They use projection in the video but you’ll get the idea

This will make a lot of games more exciting… well except for solving a puzzle since you can just throw the pieces on the table and let the oleds display the image correctly.

Just a quick link to a website who has some evidence of a beta for StarCraft 2. The shots of the Blizzard people drinking beer are just a few frames from a movie. In the background you can see a projection screen with StarCraft 2 on it. It says “welcome to StarCraft 2 Beta”. Maybe they are celebrating this milestone, maybe not. Let’s hope we hear some official statement from Blizzard soon.

Oh My Funny Goodness… take a look at this. As a huge PacMan fan I love everything that has the friendly yellow round gobbler on it… but to be honest… this is a “little” over the top. Still… it’s cool…

More pictures can be found at Zu Zu Top. What? You want to play PacMan now? Here you go!

I’ve blogged about World of Goo before on this site. It’s a great game that will entertain you for many hours. I got a tip yesterday from Sander (thanks mate!) about the World of Goo birthday sale. In short: you can determine your own price for the game. Watch it… this will only last until october 19!

You will get all downloadable versions… so one for Windows (why would I want that?) & one for Mac OS X & even the versions for Linux. I’ve donated $1.00 for the game and it makes me feel like a cheap ass but I think that’s the whole meaning of the birthday sale. I think you can donate as less as $0.01 to get the game but I didn’t try it out myself.

So if you want it rush over here before october 19.

Here you’ll see proof that I got it for only $1.00

Wired.com has a nice (fictional) write-up on the shooting of the upcoming world of warcraft movie. The idea is that the extra’s in the movie are actual WoW-players… sooo… here’s what you get when you release a group of wow-players into the real world of movie shooting. Very recognizable (and funny).

There are extras goofing off everywhere, but it takes an hour of asking around to get a group of 10 of them together to shoot a scene. And then, just when we’re about to start filming, one of them suddenly has to leave because his mother needs him to clean his room or something.

Some people have too much time on their hands… thank the übernerd for that!
Only the background should be black and the ladders should be blue… but what I’m a nagging about? Great job!!

and there’s more classic games in LEGO

My World of Warcraft character “Creamfudge” was bored out of his mind from fishing northern sculpin to fulfill his everlasting hunger for fish feasts… My bobber was bobbing so time to pull up my fishing rod and catch the loot… and there it was. The glorious sound of another achievement I’d won. What was it? Caught 10.000 fish? Is there such an achievement? Then I read the achievement notification and it said “Turtles All the Way Down”. Oh my goodness!! The sea turtle mount… Oh boy. Had to try it immediately…. walks slow on land but swims like a speedboat.

Update: Since patch 3.1 the Sea Turtle is no longer soulbound!
Here’s a video of the turtle.. it’s neat.
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Next year we will celebrate the 30th birthday of PacMan. Namco released PacMan in 1980 and is now preparing a new episode to release next year. I really wonder what the new game will be like. I really didn’t like the earlier spawn-offs like Pac-land. It sucked in ways in which something has never sucked before…

Let’s wait and see what they come up with. I hope they prove me wrong when I think that the original idea is still the perfect game. Well to be honest I liked Ms. PacMan better because of the different mazes but the idea is still the same. How about playing a little game of PacMan yourself?

Not to long ago I wrote a small entry about how sometimes a game stands out against the rest. These games are not mere imitations or improvements of other games but are genuinly original. Today I came across another such game and it is called “World of goo”. Recently the native Linux version of the game has been released (Mac and Windows was already available).

The idea is that you pick up blobs of goo and position them to create constructions. However it is all goo and flexible. The other blobs of goo will freely move along the trails of the construction. Well it’s hard to explain. Just watch the video below.

Download a working demo of World of goo. I liked it very much but to be honest I think Crayon Physics is a little bit nicer to play.

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There are not many original new games nowadays. Most of the games are 1st person shooters that are mere evolutions of previous titles. Think of the Halo’s, the Grand theft auto series. There’s nothing wrong with that. Every now and then a new original game pops up that stands out against the mainstream titles. What do you think of the just released Crayon Physics Deluxe?

You’ll have to use your creativity and your knowledge of physics to roll a ball from one spot to another spot (marked with a star). No fancy graphics, no difficult pixel shader tricks… just pure fun. This looks like hours of fun. The only drawback is that you need to run Microsoft Windows for this game or an apple iPhone. Take a look at the demonstration video below. Like what you see? There’s more on YouTube.

Some news from Azeroth (World of Warcraft). Creamfudge got his fast flying mount last saturday. When the server was back up Creamfudge saved up around 5200 gold before setting of on his last trip in the slow flying mount to the riding trainer in Shadowmoon Valley. Here’s an image of the Turbo Charged Flying Machine including the dancing Hula Girl Doll on the dashboard (one of the materials needed to craft such a machine). The Hula Girl Doll is mounted on a spring and moves and bops around as you fly. Rumor has it that the contra-movement of the bouncing Hula Doll keeps the Flying Machine stable while flying top-speed.

Halloween in Azeroth!

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I play World of Warcraft on the Bloodhoof realm. My brave warrior, called Creamfudge, is saving up 5000 gold (which is really a lot) to learn the artisan riding skill. This will allow Creamfudge to use his helicopter at full speed. So today I was grinding gold when all of a sudden a message appeared that the server would be restarted. Unfortunately the server did not just reboot but stayed down. This status message appeared when trying to logon:

The Bloodhoof server is one of the realms of the Blackout Battlegroup. What’s in a name? Calling the Battlegroup ‘blackout’ is asking for trouble… like…  eeeehhh… blackouts… sigh…

Need… to… grind… gold…  I’m almost there. I have 4900 gold. Just another 100 gold…

Zoals sommigen wellicht weten ben ik een World of Warcraft speler. Ik heb een trage start gehad met mijn gnoom (Creamfudge op realm Bloodhoof). Sinds enige tijd is Creamfudge eindelijk op het hoogste level (70 op dit moment) en voorzien van voornamelijk epic uitrusting. Wat dat betreft ben ik klaar voor de volgende uitbreiding op World of Warcraft “Wrath of the Lich King”. Het enige dat ontbrak is een epic pet die vrolijk achter je aan huppelt terwijl je zelf bloed en verderf aan het zaaien bent.

Afgelopen weekend heeft Creamfudge een zeldzame kreeft (Mr. Pinchy) gevangen (ja, je kunt zelfs vissen in World of Warcraft) die je drie wensen geeft. Na iedere wens moet je Mr. Pinchy twee dagen met rust laten. Als je om een wens verzoekt kan er een aantal zaken gebeuren:

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Here’s a nice compilation of hilarious bugs in various computer games. The trend is towards realistic physics so characters are not pre-rendered but drawn based on the physical model of the game. Not all game programmers are Einsteins.

Een tijdje geleden was in Parijs Blizzards’ World Wide Invitational. Blizzard lanceerde daar een nieuwe diablo. Ook was er voor de pers gelegenheid om een indruk te krijgen van StarCraft II. Blizzard heeft al laten weten dat we tenminste tot 2009 moeten wachten op StarCraft II. Tot die tijd: (p)review op tweakers.net