It’s amazing to think about how long I’ve been playing games. I was 3 when the Atari 2600 came out and I’ve never stopped. I’m right on the cusp of saying that I’ve been playing my entire life, and the videogame industry started when I did.
It’s quite comical to a few of my friends that I have my Atari hooked up to my 1080p HDTV but to be honest the picture looks great, and the low-res pixels aged much better than the NES/Genesis/Etc. that relied a bit on the low-res TV’s to hide their imperfections. As I glance at the year I can’t help but do the quick math in my head and it dawns on me that Kaboom! came out in 1981, 30 years ago this year. That’s both amazing and sad to me, just another notch in the “I’m getting old” belt.
I figure it’s the perfect time to pay some reverence to this classic and aged title, and revisit it again with a proper review. So, after all this time how does it fare?
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David Sirlin has become something of a maverick in the world of competitive games over the last few years. Puzzle Strike managed to recreate the experience of Capcom’s Puzzle Fighter in a tabletop experience, complete with its own set of Street Fighter-style characters. Yomi brought those same characters into a rock-paper-scissor style card battle. And wedged neatly in between those two releases was Flash Duel, a card game that brought Sirlin’s Fantasy Strike fighters back, albeit in a somewhat simpler fashion.
The basics in Flash Duel are incredibly straight-forward. Each player is represented by a wooden pawn, and at the start of the game these pawns occupy opposite ends of numbered board. In your hand are five cards, each of which features a number from 1 thru 5 on it. Players will use these cards to move, attack, defend, and push.
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My arms are sore. Really really sore. Go ahead and make your jokes, but I have a damned good reason for it this time: I’m woefully out of shape.
Also – Fruit Ninja Kinect.
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The best grindhouse movies of the 1970s almost always feature laughably lame violence, gratuitous nudity, and plots so ludicrous, it defies logic that people would even endure five minutes of such a crapfest. Luckily, that sort of movie is right in my wheelhouse and “Hobo With A Shotgun” hits each one of those marks admirably. “Hobo With A Shotgun” was born from one of the fake trailers featured in 2007′s “Grindhouse.” Personally, I would have preferred it if they made “Thanksgiving” or “Werewolf Women of the SS” into a full length feature, but this movie does just fine on its own.
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Thomas Woodwind is a professional. Silver-haired, sharply dressed, blunt in manner. He’s been the best at what he does for a long time, if he wasn’t the best he wouldn’t be around to be involved in this story. He specializes in security, especially getting around it. That’s why he’s been summoned by the top London firm to retrieve something of priceless value, he’ll get the job done quickly, quietly and completely. Of course as this is a Warren Ellis story, nothing is always quite what it seems. (more…)
Move over Dan! I’m taking over the show notes! Well, for this show at least. Dan is woefully absent from this session as Ryan, Rich and I try to make due without him. Everywhere Dan isn’t there’s a gaping hole but we do our best to press on. Winter is coming, after all.
Listen to the podcast here, and be sure to stick around for Ryan’s super amazing (if short) impression of a famous cartoon character.
Here’s the link to give Perpetual Geek Machine: Show #00031 a listen!
Here’s the breakdown on where to find/follow us online!
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While I’ll always prefer the original, there’s simply no way around it – Aliens was one hell of a good movie. Games Workshop thought so too, and back in 1989 they decided to show this love by ripping off the premise and cramming it into the Warhammer 40k universe with the release of the board game Space Hulk. 11 years and 2 re-releases later, Fantasy Flight Games decided to use their licensing rights to re-imagine it as a card game. The results, like the film it’s ripping off, are exquisite.
In the Warhammer Universe, a Space Hulk is a derelict spacecraft left floating through the cosmos, its crew either dead or abandoned. Death Angel tells the tale of a team of Space Marines who board the ship Sin of Damnation. Their mission? To quell the Genestealer infestation aboard and destroy the forward launch control rooms.
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The year is 90,000 B.C. and I don’t want to alarm you but there’s an Ice Age right around the corner. Time is short if you want to survive (or maybe even thrive). This encroaching Ice Age is the backdrop of this game that recreates what the species of the Earth battled for vying for survival and dominance. The game starts with all species in balance but in the typical “Survival of the Fittest” battle those balances tip.
Dominant Species is a game that grabbed my attention after hearing numerous glowing reviews online and my own desire to “step it up a notch” so to speak in how involved the games are that I play. Dominant Species is easily the most involved game in my collection and requires players that are serious about playing a game (you know what I mean). If you’re interested in getting together with friends, having a few drinks, and shooting the shit while playing a board game I think I’d have to recommend looking elsewhere. Playing a game like Dominant Species not only takes hours if played correctly, it’s the kind of game that requires the game itself to be the center of the action and not something that is just the glue to get some people to a table together.
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