For anyone unfamiliar with WiiCade, you should definitely check out iAnimate’s article to familiarize yourself with them.

Basically WiiCade is a site that has collected a bunch of great mouse-based games in order to offer a free gaming experience for Wii owners via the built-in opera browser.

Since it’s inception several other sites have taken to the same concept, but being the pioneer that it is, WiiCade has upped the ante.

With the release of their new WiiCade API for Flash Player 7 (currently the only version supported by the Wii’s browser), flash developer’s now have the ability to utilize all the buttons on the Wii controller, expanding the potential game library for the wii beyond simplistic mouse games.

For anyone familiar with MY work, you can expect to see 2 of my most popular titles on WiiCade very soon.

Radioactive Snakes from Mars will be played using the Wii’s D pad, so you can relax on your sofa and gobble up pills on your big screen.

Turn the controller sideways like an NES gamepad and you can also play Nutty McNuts using the D-pad and 1/2/A buttons.

With WiiCade’s api I was able to get these games using WiiMote input in a matter of minutes with only a few very minor changes to my games.  Unfortunately, I have yet to get my hands on a Wii, so it was extremely helpful that the WiiCade API also accepts keyboard input to help you test your games with the api.

This API is a huge step for web-gaming, continuing to empower developers to reach new audiences, and giving Wii owners a lot of free content so they can maximize their online experiences.

With enough support, WiiCade is poised to shine a very bright light on an often overlooked section of the independent gaming industry.

Game developers can get the API here, and Wii owners will want to check out wiicade.com on a regular basis.

Wii would like to play… ON THE INTERNETS!!!!!!!!!

I remember when I was younger, watching my dad try and play Doom.  I gave him such a hard time for leaning his body and trying to look around the corners in the game.  I guess he was just so immersed in the game environment he felt like he was actually in it, but it was still pretty funny to watch.

I never thought I would catch myself doing the very same thing, let alone with a web game. But those bastards over at FreeWorldGroup (with DX Interactive) got me ducking and diving through their new game, ‘Missile Game 3D HS‘.

Missile Game is not an incredible feat of gaming genius by any means. You play as a missile trying to fly through a tube with rotating obstacles, and it’s all 1st person view. The art is simple black and white circles with varying shapes cut out, and lines to indicate the walls.The sound is pretty plain, and the music, while certainly not bad, is nothing to write home about. Even the control is extremely basic…. you just move the mouse.

But what you don’t expect from such a simple game, is just how easily you get sucked in. As you start shooting down this 3d tube at break-neck speeds, you no longer care about any of the shortcomings the game may have, all you want to do is not run into a wall.

I could write a large review, as I have in the past, but I really think this is one of those games that you just have to play.  Words and screenshots will not do it justice. I’m not sure I would play this game for large amounts of time, and I probably won’t play it next week… but damnit, I am having a blast (pardon the pun) with it right now!

[ Play Missile Game 3D HS ]

Railroad Ruckus by Orange Fox Games is a nice fast pace “get people stuff or they die” train type game.

As you can see in the screen shot, not much in the way of fancy art. It’d be nice if the stations changed each level or something. The only thing that breaks the sameness of the game is when you get power ups. I will say I haven’t seen little circles explode into so much blood before. That was very well done.

Good sound effects and I like the choice of song selections (and being able to turn it off).

What kept me playing, just like other games of this genre, is that while slick graphics are always nice nothing in this game takes away from the franticly fun game play. To me that’s what a game should always have. With hi scores and even a nice “tips” link, this is to me what a casual game should be all about.

[ Play Railroad Ruckus ]

Ever since the late 90’s, Flash games have been pivotal to providing us with web-based entertainment and helping us escape from intolerable boredom. These Flash games make the Internet great, but with the new advancements in next-gen technology we ponder; wouldn’t it be awesome if we could play these games on our TV? Well Aaron Worrall, David Stubbs and John Eysman thought the exact same thing. They took it among themselves to create a website where you could play flash games designed for the Wii!

Wiicade is a Flash arcade website. It focuses on Flash games that exclusively use the mouse to play the game, allowing wii owners to play (via the integrated Opera browser) using their wiimote! The great thing about this website is the way it’s bridging the gap between console gaming and casual web-gaming, creating a whole new format that’s enjoyable and challenging to all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cursor Killer by Doug Adair is a perfect game for Valentines Day, as it has absolutely nothing to do with it but it has a metal tentacle chasing after your mouse while you click on an eye to get gems, which is much more important than V-Day in my opinion.

Great art and flow through out the game with little lag for my crappy system. If I had to complain about the art it’d be because there were no little puppies being mauled by the tentacle thingy.

The main loop and the rest of the effects went well and did little to none ear rape. As always, I take time to die now and then to see what happens and a great YOUS GONNA DIES loop came on when I got low on health. Gave me a nice smile.

The game play is simple yet oddly addictive. Fooling the metal tentacle, thinking I’m gonna stay in the corner and die THEN I SWIFTLY MOVE AND CLICK ON THE EYE I OUTSMARTED YOU! OK, it’s not that epic of a game but it’s a great little time waster with built in hi scores and pleasing eyeballing scenery. I’d love to see a more fleshed out version of this, with a pause button and puppies.

[ Play Cursor Killer ]

Sometimes games get a lot more buzz than they deserve… this time, it’s a game with a shitload of bees, so maybe it makes sense.

Bee Dodger, by Steven Colie and ShirtTurtle is a rather generic side-scrolling ‘avoid the enemies’ game with very little to offer in the way of innovation. The reason I feel it’s getting a lot more hype then it deserves is the involvement of Dan Palidin, a talented artist who worked on award winning games like Alien Hominid and Dad n’ Me.

The art in this game is pretty decent, considering there’s only about 4 different ‘characters’ and none of them have many animations (the wings actually flap though!). The background is just a bunch of motion lines with an underlying color that changes as you progress. Because of the similarities in style to Dan Palidin’s art, however, people seem to be much more impressed then they would otherwise. Maybe they think Dan was the artist on the game… I don’t know.

The sound is also pretty weak in the game. The effects are pretty minimal, but at least they aren’t annoying. It’s the music that really carries this game. The music IS actually done by Dan Palidin and is a bit of a Radio Disney sounding song. You know.. those wacky dance songs that drill into your brain because they have some silly phrase that gets repeated over and over? Well in this case, it’s watermelon.

The gameplay is pretty simple and easy to pick up, but really, not very much fun. Basically you fly around with the arrow keys and try not to hit other bees. That’s it.

The first time I played the game I did rather enjoy it. After that, I didn’t really feel any desire to play again, so for people like me, it’s good for maybe 2-5 minutes.

Overall, the game just comes off as an interactive music video, because the music is the only real draw to this game.

[ Listen To Bee Dodger ]

I want to thank Dan McNeely for providing the following response to our article, ‘The Life and Death of LordBling….‘.

While I continue to have my own reservations and opinions about what happened last night, I do respect the things Dan has done and think his comments not only deserve to be published, but should get their own post so they aren’t lost in the clutter.

And so…

Everyone seems to have an opinion about what happened. The truth of the matter was ‘LordBling’ was created to support Artist, Writers and Newgrounds.The idea was to create a site that added a fresh face to parody and animation. (Hence the ‘King of Parody’ slogan) I wanted to encourage writers and animators to come up with their own ‘Bling’ creation, (See ‘Lord of the Bling’ in the Newgrounds portal) This ‘Bling’ concept could be applied to anything and everying. (Saving Private Bling, Bling Wars, B is for Bling-detta, etc) I was then going to offer animators money to create these series for the site.

Any animation created for the site would be submitted to Newgrounds as the first place to show what the animator had created. In return, I would pay them for the work and help distribute their work around the web. I saw it as a ‘win-win’ situation.

When designing the site, I had a graphic artist custom design everything so that no one would say I copied anything. The ‘Lord Bling’ character was suppose to have a ‘young, kingly’ look to him, and for reference I provided my graphic artist a link to the guy from the Fall Out series. Not Pico Related @ All.

The template was choosen from ‘TemplateMonster.com‘ and the layout was based around sites like CrazyMonkeyGames, Newgrounds, FlashPortal, Hallpass, ArmorGames, etc. It was a combination of things I liked from all of these properties. (Again it was never intended to emulate, steal, or undermine what Newgrounds has done or created)

After going into the beta test period, it was quickly noted by a few as a rip off of Newgrounds, which was quite upsetting to me because of the level of respect I have for Tom Fulp and the support he has given to me over the years. I then decided to pull down the site, and have the graphic artist remove the logos since people thought it was copy right infringement.

The current content on the site was from places that distribute their work freely (CrazyMonkeygames, ArmorGames, etc) and the few animations listed on the site were from talented artist that I had already worked with, and I had them listed as the author in the ‘Comments’ section of the site.

In no way was it meant to emulate Newgrounds. It’s purpose was to support animators and writers and help them get paid for the hard work that they submit freely everyday to Newgrounds.

I’m still hoping for an explaination as to why so much effort went into hiding the existence of the site, but that’s another story for another day…

Grab a snack and a few beers… we have a story to tell, and it’s probably going to take some time.

It all started yesterday evening when several people took notice of a new Flash Portal site called LordBling.com. At first glance the site looked a bit familiar, with stunning graphics and a layout that was easy to navigate. It had a bunch of great flash content with a seemingly large community.

The only problem was, the group of people that took notice were members of the Newgrounds.com community, and what they saw was not just a blatant ripoff of the community they loved, but a meticulous near-copy, right down to descriptive phrases and ‘user submitted’ comments. The flash content, too, seemed to be copied, instantly branding this site as a content thief in the eyes of those who have supported flash artists for the past several years.

Unfortunately, while many newgrounds users are commendable people, and are very supportive of each other, many are also lacking a bit in the maturity department.

Rather than simply sending emails of protest to the site’s creator, it quickly spiraled into an all out flame-war and spam-fest. In a very short period of time, LordBling.com was full of hateful remarks and the site’s administrators had no chance to keep up.

It was then that the owner of LordBling.com decided to ‘voluntarily’ shut the site down. But who were the mysterious owners of the site, and why did this site make the Newgrounds community so angry when there are so many other flash portal sites around that get no heat at all?