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Racketeer

April 21, 2011 Cars / Family / Games / Internet / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Travel / Video Games / Videos
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A few years ago, my mom’s side of the fam­ily had a larger than usual fam­ily reunion in order to cel­e­brate my great-uncle’s 80th birth­day. The older cousins (of which I am the youngest) planned a cousins-​only out­ing so the adults could have a week­end with­out kids underfoot.

Orig­i­nally, the plan was to bor­row some cars and car­a­van to Wis­con­sin Dells, a resort town about four hours away known for its many water parks. While research­ing places to stay, I found out about Great Wolf Lodge, which has a game called Mag­iQuest. The web­site and reviews made me think of an extended “Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters” type of Dis­ney ride, but fantasy-​themed. Penny Arcade just described it as “if they had RFID at Hog­warts.” My cousins would have loved it. (Hell, I’d prob­a­bly get a kick out of it as well.)

How­ever, Penny Arcade went on to reveal a darker side to this game:

Appar­ently, the peo­ple who run Mag­iQuest have been play­ing some Recettear. I have noth­ing against them try­ing to turn a lit­tle more profit, but I really hope they aren’t push­ing upsales on kids like this.

Any­way, we ended up not going because of time con­straints, and went to Water Park of Amer­ica (so named because of its prox­im­ity to the Mall of Amer­ica) for a sigle day instead. Still a lot of fun, though! I got to try FlowRider, their indoor surf­ing thing:

Maybe we’ll try for Mag­iQuest again this sum­mer. This year won’t be quite as big, but a good num­ber of the cousins will find them­selves in Min­nesota again.

Incom­ing search terms:

  • penny arcade about magiquest

You Don't Know Forbidden Castle Pucks

April 12, 2011 Board Games / Friends / Games / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Television / Video Games
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After we wrapped up Act 1 of the Games of Non­cha­lance, Thu H and I caught a bus back to my place, and I drove us to meet up with Aaron L and Sue L for some board game action and to watch the Sharks game. Orig­i­nally, Sue L was going to host, but Chris T and Tina K offered up their place, so we headed to Hayward.

Got there in the mid­dle of a game of Car­cas­sonne. Got to try Kona Brew­ing Co.‘s Koko Brown, a coconut beer.

Pretty damn tasty!

Also had some Asahi Black while we watched the Sharks game. Chris T and Tina K also put out a cheese and dried fruit plat­ter and we classed it up with mul­ti­ple wines, includ­ing a Passover kosher one. Aaron L explained that to make wine good for Passover (“the bread­less hol­i­day”), they remove the yeast early before it raises. Not sure where that point is in the wine fer­men­ta­tion process, but it def­i­nitely tasted like it was stopped and then fortified.

Jason G also stopped by, and we played a cou­ple of games of You Don’t Know Jack, which Chris T had for his XBOX. Turns out, he used to play the orig­i­nal on PC back in the day, too! Play­ing with four play­ers at once was really fun. I really wish we could do it with the Steam ver­sion. Or bet­ter yet, net­work play!

After that, we taught every­one For­bid­den Island. Started on Nor­mal on a rel­a­tively easy board (all the impor­tant spots near the cen­ter), but still lost due to the water level reach­ing instant death levels.

After that, headed home. All in all, a fan­tas­tic way to spend a Saturday!

Before Biohazard

March 22, 2011 Downloads / Family / Games / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories / Video Games / Videos
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There was D/​Generation!

As you can see from this teaser, you play a courier who starts on a rooftop and must deliver a pack­age to a sci­en­tist 10 floors away. And there are var­i­ous secu­rity sys­tems and escaped bio-​engineered mon­sters between you and your goal.

I was read­ing an arti­cle about retro games yes­ter­day when a ran­dom EGA screen­shot of some iso­met­ric game reminded me of an old game Chi Ba and I used to play at Cau Ba’s house the sum­mer we watched Michael L and Andy L together.

I remem­ber being very impressed with the graph­ics since I was so used to side-​scrolling plat­form­ers, and also quite frus­trated by the dif­fi­culty of the game. I don’t think Chi Ba and I ever man­aged to beat the game that sum­mer, and I for­got about it after­wards. (Thanks to XKCD for remind­ing me of the title!)

Appar­ently, it is aban­don­ware now, so I might give it another go. Below is a metic­u­lous play through video which should solve every puz­zle in the game except one, for which there is no known solu­tion online. (I have not watched this yet.)

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