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Sopabuena

Distract Yourself

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Remember that old feature about those little games you can dowload to mess around with for a while? Well I'm sure there must've been some additions to the genre, anything you can recommend?

I've recentently been playing those falling sand games, they are pretty fun (at least for me since im pretty keen on physics-based games, realistic or not) but I'm certain there is better stuff out there.

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Armadillo Run is great. In many ways it's like Bridge Builder / Pontifix, yes, but it's more fun when it's a (kind of) animal rather than a train. :)

I strongly recommend Elastomania, too - maybe it's an old concept, it's been done a lot in web applets too, but the implementation in Elastomania is great and it's approximately one million times more responsive than the Java/flash/whatever applets on web sites. If you find it too easy, try playing without using the left/right arrow keys... much harder. :)

On the other hand, if you like web site minigames, try mousebreaker.com - it's mostly a collection from other sources, they don't own the games, but there are some nice ones there.

--

gfoot - minigames aren't just for the small minded

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;( I wish I had time to write more Distract Yourselfs (selves? whatever)

Maybe eventually.

In the meantime, I have been wasting time with Armadillo Run and (hee) Plasma Pong (though it is ridiculous and probably won't hold my interest for long at all)

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Hey that's nice. All old games combined. Needs more centipede (or maybe there is one and I didn't get that far).

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You've gotta get into Japanese freeware games. They're so many of them that are retail-quality and free for download.

First of all, CAVE STORY is probably one of THE BEST Action/RPG I've ever played. Ever. Honestly, it's up there with Ocarina of Time. It made a huge splash on the indie-games-cicuit a year or so ago. 5+ hours of gameplay with multiple weapons and endings, characters and an wildly imaginative plot. Just be sure to download it with the English translation.

Then, from the same creator as Cave Story, theres a whole bunch of other great games such as Ika-Chan, a mini-rpg with beautiful 2-D graphics about a squid, and Megane,

a neat time-waster where you have to catch glasses on your face. Also with multiple endings, even though it takes about 2 minutes (if that) to beat.

OK. Hikware!

Their blockbuster was Warning Forever, which became popular also in America a year or so ago. It's a replayable shoot-em-up, as you have the oppourtunity to determine the ways in which you're enemy evolves by playing the game differently. Everything you ever wanted to know about WF ishere.

Other notables are Ray Hounds, another popular shmup, and Fric, and addictive, albiet weird game testing your ability to move the mouse as fast as possible in various mini-games. All the best games are in the Japanese downloads section.

More good shooters:

rRootage

Grid Wars 2 (this one's English. It's a very complex and interresting game, read the review)

Mogura Reverse, in which you play a flying mole. This is an incredible game.

Torus Trooper

The old DOS game I wasted hours on when I was younger and more naive, Secret Agent by the late, great Apogee, famous for Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D. I still love this one.

Ok just a few more...

The Dismount Games, my favorite by far is Truck Dismount, although Stair Dismount made a bigger splash on the internet. Good old fun with physics.

Within a Deep Forest

Siroi Danmakukun, which allows you to practice your vertical 2-D shooter evasion skills against hundreds of bullet-patterns. Check out a video here and try to beat these top scores.

RoX, similar to a certain Shockwave game with a monkey I can't remember the name of; comes with a level editor.

Cloudphobia is a pretty game.

Rumble Box

Scorched Earth, another highly replayable and timeless DOS game; the "Mother of all Games".

And of course, Super Mario War!!!

I downloaded them all apparently without incident and I checked up on all of them on Wikipedia and Home of the Underdogs etc. to see if there were any warnings, and I found none. Plus many of these game's are well-known and ahve been featured on indie-game websites and in some cases magazines. In any case, I'm basically saying I trust the internet enough to use it without fear myself, but just barely. So just check what you're downloading, etc. But I've played all these games and they're great.

Reply if you know of any problems with any of these games/links.

These should keep you occupied at least until tomorrow. :gaming:

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N I found through the idle-article, so it's not new. I just wanted to state that it's a great game.

A year or two old, widely known and maybe not the kind of 'to mess around with for a while'-game this thread is about, but it's good and it's free: Jessica Plunkenstein and the Düsseldorf Conspiracy. A really funny and witty adventure game with Windows-Paint and Clipart graphics (somehow it works), full voice acting (actually quite good) and Ninjas (okay, it's just one).

Has someone an idea how to make the japanese version of "cave story" work properly on a not japanese-pc? It runs, but most of what should be japanese is just silly letters.

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Has someone an idea how to make the japanese version of "cave story" work properly on a not japanese-pc? It runs, but most of what should be japanese is just silly letters.

You must have a Japanese language version -- it works flawlessly for me. All in English too.

Try downloading this version, which has a complimentary English patch. And if this is a fan-based translation, it's bloody fantastic!

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Thanks Wrestlevania.

Problem is that I want it to be in japanese. The patched game runs and works fine, but unpatched all the ingame-japanese is just a letter-mixup. I guess that it maybe needs a japanese-windows, but hope there is another way.

Someone an idea?

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If you're using a recent version of Windows (2000 or XP) and the program is designed to also work on pre-2000 versions of Windows, it needs to use certain old features of the API which rely on the system-wide codepage being set properly. The code page is essentially a character set conversion map. It's a system-wide property, so changing it will affect everything you run (rather, everything which uses the old API - so probably not things like Explorer and core Windows components - just 3rd party software).

It's in the Control Panel, under Regional options, on the Advanced tab. I don't know if you need to enable any of the conversion tables - the main option you want is the "Language for non-Unicode programs". You'll need to reboot for it to have its full effect.

(I had to localize a game into Russian last year... the game was fine, but the setup program was an MFC app, using the old non-Unicode text API. Guess what the first bug US QA came back with was...)

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