We can all agree that arcades are pretty awesome. An arcade is the only place where you can pay two dollars to play a rigged crane game to not win a stuffed Scooby-Doo toy painted green and called "Ralfie-Roo" to avoid copyright infringement. And when you're hungry, why, stop by the vending machines for some chips made by a brand you've never heard of that may have been refilled as early as six years ago! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! You should be at one right now!... or come to think of it, I guess you could stay here with us and play these games that evoke all the style, fun, and difficulty of an arcade game from your computer chair. Yeah, that would be pretty sweet, too.
Plant Pong - When our robotic overlords rise up and clamp our tender flesh in the cold metallic pincers of slavery and iron-fisted oppression, and least we'll have beautiful gardens to look longingly at while we toil in the factories. Of course, they'll force us to fling drops of water around the screen using physics and blind luck to grow the flowers first, but hey. Flowers is flowers, yo.
Yan Loong Legend 2 - When you first load this side-scrolling hack-and-slash fighter, the incredible music will make you close your eyes and imagine you're Bruce Lee (or Chun Li) on a mountaintop somewhere, balancing on a post against the setting sun while David Carradine plays the flute. And then you'll have to reload because of all the swords that pierced your flesh while you had your eyes closed. Who closes their eyes while playing a game anyway? You're silly.
vel.shock() - If there is one thing we here at JiG love, it's blowing things up. And if you can reflect enemy fire back to make them blow themselves up? Well, that's a pretty sweet fruit right there, mon ami. Since neither this game nor the one it was based off of require you to use your own bullets, you can get back to building that bullet throne once you're done playing. We know you have one.
Puristic Rotation - Story? We don't need no steenkin' story! All we need is an endless supply of bullets and baddies are we are good to go go go in this shooter! Besides, now you can make up your own plot! You'll never take over Earth's supply of Reese's Peanut Butter cups, Doctor Octopus! Not when the casts of Serenity and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are here to stop you!
Balloon Headed Boy - If this game had been released thirty years ago, we would have all been watching John Travolta in a whimsical fantasy comedy about a charming young lad who used the inflation powers of his pink head to float about a colourful landscape. That would have been much less depressing. Where were you when we needed you most, Balloon Headed Boy? Just where the heck were you! ? *sob*
balloon headed boy is fun but it obnoxious how you have to go back to the map every time instead of automatically progressing.
Yan Loong Legend 2 was probably my favorite of the lot. Once you get the hang of the controls and start learning some new combos, it's actually a pretty enjoyable experience.
And for those of you who were frustrated with Puristic Rotation, I found a trick/cheat that helps out a lot. Of course, it also defeats the purpose of the game. All you have to do is:
Hold down the "fire" button (the left mouse button) and drag your ship off the bottom of the screen. Your ship will be out of view and immune to damage, but your shots will still damage the enemy.
So why is more than half of Balloon-Headed Boy locked and unplayable on the link you provide? I get past the first island and suddenly I'm expected to go to Kongregate and play half the game over again. Casual Space had the same problem. Could you provide the links which actually contain the full games, or is there some policy I'm not aware of at work here? (I also sometimes wonder why Pastel Games mostly seem to be on an ArmorGames link rather than their PastelGames.com link.)
I just hit that same wall JIGuest mentioned. Pretty annoying. Why not just link to it on Kongregate?
Balloon headed boy is rather buggy - it's possible to fall through the "!" blocks without knocking them out of place and I've got stuck under the scenery a couple of times. Shame, because it's quite fun other than that.
Balloon Headed Boy link switched to Kongregate version. I was not aware the distributed version was castrated like that. That was my doing, I apologize.
vel.shock()?
It's a reduced version of Rayhound by the developer of Warning Forever.
Thanks Jay; I'll probably look at the game again once it's a new day and I've forgotten how it all went. It seems to be an annoying trend in some games to truncate them outside of certain sites - or even just have bonus levels restricted to one place. I can see why they do it, but it gives the impression that there's only one "correct" place to play it, and everywhere else is effectively a demo.
I've played Baloon headed boy when it was shareware. It's pretty cool that now you can play it free, but i still prefer downloadable games.
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