When I woke up this morning, I found myself locked in this strange room with a lot of weird stuff. Whoever brought me here really needs to hire a better cleaning staff: there are keys, diaries and puzzle pieces all over the place! Under the cushions, behind the paintings... Jeez! Good thing I was able to get a Wi-Fi password by breaking that creepy clown statue in the corner, and are thus able to bring you another wonderful round of classics from the JayIsGames Vault! This week, we've got a surprisingly deep ultra-retro RPG, a dice game that'll keep your week rolling, and an absolute masterpiece of music play.
- Ginormo Sword - Ginormo Sword, by Babarageo, may look like a lost RPG cartridge for the Atari 2600, but make no mistake... that pink ninja warrior is totally hardcore. At first glance, everything about Ginormo Sword appears rudimentary. The enemies are blobs of pixels, your only weapon is a sword, and the soundtrack can only be described as "beep-based". But a minimalist aesthetic doesn't preclude complex of mechanics, or, for that matter, furious fun. By the time you reach the 12th of the games 16 areas, you'll be blasting napalm spells at minotaurs, while upgrading fire resistance, and feeding mercenary kitty NIN-NIN. Whew. The amount of clicking you'll need to win isn't small, but hey, what's the sacrifice of a few finger-tendons when the prize is 4-bit glory? Check out our guide while you're at it!
- Zilch - It goes by many names: Dice 10000, Foo, Boxcar, Bogus, Dix Mille... but for my money, the canonical name was decided when Gaby Vanhegan decided to port it to flash. It's Zilch, and it's amazing! With just the right blend of luck and skill, Zilch may take a while to fully grasp. Once you do, however, you'll have years of fun waiting for you. The computer opponents only cheat a little, but still enough to be satisfying when you kick their bony CPU's. Still, nothing can beat the awesomeness of human vs. human dice rolling, whether on the same computer or across the world wide web. What are the chances of you not enjoying this game?... Well, you can probably guess.
- Music Catch - When the scholarly history of music in games is written, it seems obvious what games will get whole chapters dedicated to them: PaRappa The Rapper, DDR, Rez, Guitar Hero... But I hope that this hypothetical work dedicates at least a couple of pages to Music Catch, one of the first games to demonstrate that casual flash releases could keep the beat just as well as any others. Simple but transcendent, Music Catch's perfectly arranged feast for the eyes, ears, and fingers sweeps you away as effectively as a orchestra symphony or your favorite song played on a perfect pair of headphones. Other games have since followed the Music Catch formula, and to great success. Still, there is still something stirring to be felt here, four minutes of sound at a time.
While we welcome any comments about this weekly feature here, we do ask that if you need any help with the individual games, please post your questions on that game's review page. Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and rediscover some awesome!
Ginormo Sword seriously?
Only if you like carpal tunnel.
Well, what if I do? :)
lmao, then say goodbye to playing games all day without pain after playing that one.
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