the castle arrgh

For this week’s Games of our Lives, I looked back at an awesome game called Cavelon:

Once upon a time, an evil wizard kidnapped a beautiful princess and
imprisoned her at the top of a scary tower. She cried and cried until a
brave knight entered the castle to battle the wizard and rescue her.

Once upon a different time, some video-game designers turned this
story into a pretty cool little game. For reasons that are best left
buried in the mists of Avalon, they didn’t name it "Magic Tower" or "Happy Princess Rescue." They named it "Cavelon," even though it has nothing to do with caves, and there aren’t any lons to speak of.

Kids today might not like it because: There’s no Custer’s Revenge-style reward when you finally rescue the girl.

Kids today might like it because: Cavelon has real, undeniable retro-gaming charm. After a few games, they’re just a waffle-cone away from a full-on 1983 flashback.

I also reviewed NHL06:

Worth playing for: The little details. When the home team gets a
penalty, the organ plays "Three Blind Mice" as the player skates into
the box, jawing words that look an awful lot like "vacuum" at the
referee. The closer you get to the end of the period, the more
chopped-up the ice becomes. Between plays, skaters talk to each other,
and during the replays, fans (dressed in the home team’s jerseys, of
course) jump up and down, clap their hands, and cheer.

Final judgment: EA Sports set the standard for sports games a long time ago. NHL 06
meets that standard, but it doesn’t bring much new and exciting to the
party, which isn’t really their fault. There isn’t much more to add to
an already-fantastic series. If you’re a hockey fan, and you haven’t
played any of the EA Sports NHL titles, where the hell have you been?
You’re going to love this game. But if you’re a longtime fan, you may
want to sit this virtual season out.

I’m working on this week’s GOOL right now, which is shaping up to be kinda funny.

In an unrelated bit of news, I really like the simple, clean look of WWdN In Exile. I was going for a much cleaner look with the WWdN redesign already, and I think it’s going to be more like what you see here: two columns, simple navigation, lightweight graphics.

17 thoughts on “the castle arrgh”

  1. Hey Wil,
    have you considered adding an IFRAME to WWdN, which loads up this page? It’d be one way to have the temp blog show up over there. Not as pretty, of course, but it’d kinda give you the best of both worlds.
    Just a thought from up north. Damn, the snow on the mountains stuck.

  3. If possible, I hope you manage to avoid fixed column widths. My vision is not so good, so I tend to use rather large fonts. That causes many sites to end up with two or three words per line — and they also waste 50% or more of the screen width on ‘unused space’ (as this page nearly does, too). I miss the old days when formatting was up to the renderer (as [insert your God(s) here] intended). [smile]
    IMHO, fixed width text regions and/or font sizes are evil and folks who use them are servents of the [insert your Devil(s) here].

  6. I actually A/B’d EA’s NHL 2005 and Sega’s ESPN NHL 2K5 last year. To me, the Sega game looked better; it had easier-to-use controls, and I liked the announcers better (with Gary Thorne and Bill Clement calling the plays, it was almost like watching the game on TV). And, of course, the price point was MUCH lower. I wound up selling off the EA game and keeping the Sega one.
    Now, 2K Games’ followup, NHL 2K6, has to use the Hockey Night in Canada announcers, who some people find annoying. (Damn you, EA, for locking up ESPN in an exclusive deal!) I haven’t tried either of the 2006 games yet, but I’m still likely to try NHL 2K6 first…that price point is still a pretty good selling point.

  7. CUSTER’S REVENGE! YAH! My favorite x-rated Atari cartridge. What am I saying? My ONLY x-rated Atari cartridge. Ah. Good times. My thumb still hurts, too.

  8. I like this clean look, the colors are very soothing… like the muted tones of a crisp and foggy Fall morning.
    Dig the photo too – it matches perfectly!

  10. You moved on from the burrito to WWdN–why not migrate again? If it’s really FUBAR’d, it’d make sense, though nobody likes to claim defeat. You could redirect the DNS to here from the main URL…and the archives….um, uh, ok, so maybe just changing over doesn’t work so well, but you’re right, this look is good.
    G’luck!

  13. Wil,
    I hate to suggest heresy, but you might consider moving away from MT and looking at WordPress.
    Wordpress ships with a beautiful default template called Kubrick, invent by Michael, over at http://www.BinaryBonsai.com. It’s not the template he uses anymore at BB, because he’s moved on, but it’s still fantastic; I use a modded version of it for my Mac site, http://www.macmove.com.
    It’s clean, fast, two column, short on graphics and totally state-of-the-art in terms of web technologies.
    Just my two cents.

  15. Off the wall hockey rule (which I’ve yet to see happen in my years of attending or watching hockey):
    “Three Blind Mice” is the only “outlawed” piece of organ music. Playing three blind mice when the home team is assessed a penalty is grounds for an additional Bench minor penalty (unsportsmanlike conduct) to be assessed to the home team.
    You may also be assessed a penalty for playing music for too long after the puck drops. I remember a Wings game where they were warned about this.
    Though absolutly no one beats the old St. Louis Blues arena. Nothing beats hearing Led Zepplin and other random classic rock being played on the organ. Or the “cross country incidental music” from “…Holy Grail”

  17. Hey Wil,
    I’m sorry about all the trouble you are having with WWDN. Computers are great, but they can be a pain in the ass sometimes! I’ll keep up with you here for now. I can’t wait until your new book is out. Good luck with your website.

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