Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

As I was considering what I wanted to talk about for todays

As I was considering what I wanted to talk about for todays Retro Tuesday I decided to talk about one of my favorite video game movies. When I was a wee lad I dreamed of competing in a video game tournament*. To be crowned the best in all the lands on Nintendo would have been one of the coolest things to happen to me. Video game companies like Nintendo understood this and released a few video game TV shows and movies to capture this, one such movie was The Wizard.

The Wizard was filmed in 1989 and stars Fred Savage, Christian Slater, Beau Bridges, Luke Edwards and Jenny Lewis. A bit of movie trivia, Jenny Lewis who played the love interest of Fred Savage in the Wizard... Read All

Kingsburg: Protect The Kingdom!

This weekend I played a cool strategy board game called Kingsburg. In Kingsburg you are in charged with the protection of your city each year from Orcs, Goblins and other fantastical creatures. You collect resources from allocating your dice roll to certain advisors that grant you resources. For instance, if you allocate 1 to the Joker you can obtain a victory point. If you allocate a 2 to an advisor you can collect a gold resource. These resources can be spent building things that grant you abilities that can help you defend your city or grant you other bonuses. The game lasts 6 "years" and the person that collects the most victory points wins. and our game lasted... Read All This weekend I played a cool strategy board game called Kingsburg. In Kingsburg you are in charged with the protection of your city each year from Orcs, Goblins and other fantastical creatures. You collect resources from allocating your dice roll to certain advisors that grant you resources. For instance, if you allocate 1 to the Joker you can obtain a victory point. If you allocate a 2 to an advisor you can collect a gold resource. These resources can be spent building things that grant you abilities that can help you defend your city or grant you other bonuses. The game lasts 6 "years" and the person that collects the most victory points wins. and our game lasted about 2 hours. Its a very strategic game and as such I had to adjust a few times to eek out second place. Yay for not losing! Or is second place the first loser?

My strategy focused on buildings that netted me a high defense score so I could survive the invaders. I then netted a few more soldiers by purchase or a dice roll placement so I could beat the invaders to gain a few bonus resources. I didn't lose a battle as if you do the penalty is the destruction of one of your buildings or a loss of resources. If you have the same soldiers/defense as the invaders have attack power its a "push" and you don't win or lose anything.

There are a lot of buildings to chose from and each one gives you special abilities and bonuses, again I went with defense and as such was never defeated by enemies. You could lose the battle a few times and still win the game though. One thing I lacked was having a handy amount of resources. The winning player built buildings to increase his economy and spent the latter half of the game on defense. This proved to be a great strategy because he out built me by nearly double and won the game by an impressive lead.

Kingsburg is a solid game and I recommend you give a try. Its a bit daunting to try it but after a few rounds its not too bad. That said, rolling the dice and allocating your roll to the correct advisor is more strategic than it sounds. Many times I made the wrong choice but it wasn't too bad as you roll for resources often.

Awesome video game store window art. The album(2 shots

Awesome video game store window art.

The album(2 shots total):

http://imgur.com/a/lWLnO#D7ezW

Has anyone ever tried and a It looks great and seems to

http://i796.photobucket.com/albums/yy248/brinelol/1.png

Has anyone ever tried OCTGN3? It seems to be a great graphical card game emulator. That is you can play a lot of different cards games with it online (e.g. Magic: The Gathering and a bunch more

It looks great and seems to be an awesome way to build decks and test them out (or mess about with that latest rare before buying a case to get it :)

Our Interview with Steve Ellis of Rainy Day Games

After the first few minutes of meeting Steve Ellis it’s apparent we share an unadulterated love for gaming. Steve Ellis runs Rainy Day Games, a local game store that sells many classic games, miniatures, RPGs, card games and puzzles. I was able to sit down with Steve so we could talk about gaming.

Rainy Day Games started 14 years ago after Steve and his business partner Jeff met playing Magic: The Gathering. Steve dropped the idea of starting a store together and the idea stuck. Both decided to forgo being paid at first and continued to work day jobs during the first few years. In looking back, Steve is happy they did this as it helped the store get on it’s feet. One... Read All

So the big Summer Sale is coming up on Steam. People

So the big Summer Sale is coming up on Steam. People projected it to start yesterday, but it hasn't yet. What games are you looking to snag?

I have a massive wishlist, I'm hoping to find the Fallouts going for cheap, maybe Skyrim. While I've played them all extensively, the experience is so much better on PC.

I read a cool article on gearboxity that featured the new

I read a cool article on gearboxity that featured the new Gunzer from Borderlands 2. They interview Paul Hellquist, Creative Director for Borderlands 2 as well as Scott Kester the Concepter Designer and Jonathan Hemingway the Game Designer. The article is note worthy because it traces the evolution of the Gunzer design over the project. I don't see that in interviews so it seemed radtacular.

*snip*

"The Gunzerker started as an action skill in a long list of potential action skills. The draw of dual wielding in our gun-centered game was immediately very strong. It was an idea that was kicked around during the development of the first game but with all of the other major... Read All

I bought this game for my brothers birthday just because it

I bought this game for my brother's birthday just because it was a spiel des jahres winner. But we just left in the box for a while and didn't finally play it until the town got blasted with a snowstorm and there was nothing to do. We had no idea how to play the game at first, and it took a few games before any kind of strategies emerged. But then someone did some chaining with the villiage and we started to understand the concept of "building an engine". Got addicted to the game quickly after that! Love the whole series. My favorite game, for sure!

jdodson Admin wrote on 06/29/2012 at 03:47am

Ive seen this game as a staple in many stores and on a few shelves of people I know but I hadn't given it much thought. Sounds really interesting now.

We should play it sometime.

How many different strategies do you know of with this one?

Doug_Beatty Post Author wrote on 08/09/2012 at 12:31am

There are so many strategies that you can you take depending on the card set that you end up playing with. I think the base set has 25 "kingdom" cards out of which you only play any given game with 10 kingdom cards. So there is an incredible amount of variety that is inherent in the game if you choose the 10 kingdom cards to play with randomly (which I like to do). This provides lots of room for many types of strategies :)

We should play sometime!

jdodson Admin wrote on 08/09/2012 at 01:47am

Yeah, sounds like fun. I've got a few new games as well.

Doug_Beatty Post Author wrote on 08/21/2012 at 05:26am

You need to invite me ovet to your guys' house :)

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Valve is a cool company. I am looking forward to what

Valve is a cool company. I am looking forward to what people create with this tool. Machinima anyone?

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http://sourcefilmmaker.com/

Im going to do something different this week for Retro

I'm going to do something different this week for Retro Tuesday. This week I want to hear everyones stories about your very first video game experience. I'll start off the discussion.

Although it's entirely possible I had played games earlier, my first real memory of playing video games was when I was around 4 years old and my parents bought us a NES, complete with Duck Hunt, Gyromite, and ROB the robot (pictured above). :)

Even by 1987 standards ROB was pretty lame, but to 4 year old me it was "OMG A ROBOT IN MY LIVING ROOM!!!" I was pretty hooked. I think there were only two games that worked with ROB, and as it was I only ever had Gyromite. When you were playing... Read All