Video Games

Apparently I am a Pacman Ghost:

I am a Pacman Ghost.

I like to hang around with friends, chatting, dancing, all that sort of thing. We don’t appreciate outsiders, and do our best to discourage others approaching us. I enjoy occasionally wandering around randomly, and often find that when I do so, I get to where I wanted to be. What Video Game Character Are You?

This has to be possibly the coolest online survey ever. It manages to dig deep into your personality without posing horribly blunt questions, and I didn’t feel emo taking it! Plus it allows you to give as many answers as you want, or none at all!

In honor of The Legend of Zelda’s twentieth anniversary, here’s an evolutionary diagram of Link over the years, culminating with Twilight Princess’s Link on the right. This is just begging to be put on a t-shirt.

Bonus points* for anyone who can rattle ‘em all off. Double bonus points for anyone who can figure out which Link is (sort of) missing.

See also:
Old school Zelda rap commercial
Happy Birthday Zelda! 20 years old today

*current exchange rate: 1 Bonus Point™ = $0.00

So I got bored recently, and decided to take a stroll down memory lane, aka Flash Games Avenue. I rediscovered a classic: Defend Your Castle. The goal here is to defend your castle from barbarians, who are actually just stick figures. I find the first few stages the hardest because you have to do everything by hand. You have to click on each stick figure and fling him into the air, letting gravity chalk up another kill. As you accumulate points, you can upgrade your castle such that you can “convert” the barbarians and train them to man your castle as archers, wizards, kamikazees, or craftsmen.

Repair Damage: Fix damage incurred to your castle
Upgrade Walls: Increase your castle’s ability to withstand the onslaught
Temple: With this upgrade, you can drop enemy units (gently) into your castle to convert them to your side. These converts can be trained or deployed as kamikazee units.
Archery Range: Train archers to defend your castle automatically
Workshop: Train craftsmen to repair your castle automatically
Mana Pool: Train wizards to use powerful spells
Demolition Lab: Allows you to deploy kamikazee units by clicking the convert icons below your castle hitpoints. Click the unit to detonate.

My strategy is to buy a Temple, and then an Archery Range as soon as possible after that, training my converts into archers. Then I skip the Workshop and the Demolition Lab, and save up for the Mana Poll. It is crucial to get the Mana Pool because wizards have powerful spells such as instant kill, massive explosion, and instant conversion. Thus you can eventually begin to compound the number of converts you get, and the rate at which you get them, by investing in wizards. It gets extremely simple when you have a sufficient amount of converts there is literally nothing left to do!

Even though the stick figures have buffed-up, do more damage, and run extremely fast, they are of little challenge to take out because I have 1630 archers, 728 craftsmen, and 215 wizards. You should get over 200 wizards so that mana-regeneration doesn’t become a problem.

That’s right. I didn’t get bored until I got to the 59th stage of Defend Your Castle and had acquired over 13 million points. That’s how addicting it is. Two thumbs up for this flash game! You can play it here.

Grand Idea Studios presents the Pac-Man dinner table! “Essentially, all the designers did was retrofit a new glass slab over the original machine, transforming it from “cocktail table” to a larger dining table […] The Pacman table comfortably seats four adults, and is enhanced with Clay Cowgill’s MultiPac, allowing up to 24 different game variations to be played while enjoying dinner.” This is a cute yet practical gadget suited for anyone suffering from immense nostalgia.

Joystiq writes and reports: “Nintendo of America has launched the U.S. web site for Mario and Luigi’s new DS adventure, Partners in Time. In addition to learning about the game’s characters and battle system, you can unlock bonus content by playing around with a web version of Prof. E Gadd’s time machine. Get ready to rescue Princess Peach this Tuesday!”