Bagunk Blog

Well, it’s been about 6 months since the Wii’s launch. I’ve already played through the few AAA games that have been released, and now the Wii’s been getting a little stale. There are a ton of great games in the pipeline, but those aren’t coming for a few months. What am I going to do with my system until that time comes?

I’ve complied a list of 10 things you can use your Wii for until Smash Brothers Brawl hits us across the face this fall.

1. Play Free Flash Games
There are a few web sites out there devoted specifically to providing links to flash games that work well on the Wii, some of the sites even feature news RSS feeds and such. Here are some links to a few Wii flash game web sites.

WiiPlayable
WiiCade
miiboard

2. Watch Streaming Video
While you can just head over to YouTube and check out videos there, there are again, many sites dedicated to the Wii’s Opera browser and streaming videos.

Wiitube
StumbleVideo
sofaTube
wiiSlowdown

3. Play the past top 25 Gamecube games
Despite it’s lower market share and small size, the Nintendo GameCube has a TON of great games that a lot of people missed out on. Check out IGN’s list of the top 25 games on the little system.

4. Play older classic games
The Wii has something the other systems don’t- a huge back library of classic games waiting for people to download (and pay cash for). Although some people think the Wii’s Shop Channel is a little pricey, some of these classics are wroth the admission. There are a ton of games from the NES, SNES, TubroGraphix, and Genesis, with more to be released every Monday morning in the North America and Friday’s in Europe.

5. Create celebrity Mii’s
I think I’ve had more fun creating Mii’s that didn’t look like myself, but looked like characters I saw in Movies and TV shows. Then I stumbled upon this little gem of a web site that has a TON of celebrity Miis including Master Chief, Samus, Sponge Bob, Storm Troopers, R2D2, and the classic Chuck Norris!

6. Use it as a portable presentation system
There are a few things that make the Wii great for doing presentations if you don’t have a laptop. It’s very portable and easy to hook up to a projector, it has a wireless remote and pointer, and an SD card slot. Most presentation software, like Keynote and PowerPoint, have the ability to export your slides as JPEG images. Dump those slides onto an SD card, launch the Wii’s Photo Channel and you’re good to go!

7. Use the free channels
Almost everyday I turn on my Wii. Lately, it hasn’t been for games, but the great little FREE channels that Nintendo has been releasing over the months. I usually start by checking out the weather from around the world on the Weather Channel, then hop over to the News Channel and check out the headlines, then lastly hop into the Everybody Votes Channel to give me opinion on some weird, but fun polls. It’s entertaining for a few minutes, and heck, some of the information that you get is actually worth it!

8. Use it as a free streaming media server
Orb is a piece of software that allows you to stream your media from your PC to any web browser (including the Wii’s Opera browser). Check it out, it’s free and works pretty well.

9. Lose weight and have fun doing it
There have been a lot of articles popping up online about people using the wii to loose weight. Simple pop in your copy of Wii Sports and do a few rounds of boxing and you’ll see how it’s possible. Maybe Nintendo will release an official exercise game in the future that’s more focused on weight loss, rather than using the sports titles for it.

10. E-mail yourself reminders
You can setup yourself as a friend on your wii via an email address. This makes it possible to email your Wii- complete with photos. The nice thing about this is, the Wii has a bright blue light that pulsates when you have a new message. The light is VERY hard to miss and forget about so it easily reminds you to check your messages. Violla! 21st century reminder system!

If you have any other ideas please feel free to post them in the comments for other users to see. Hopefully this will keep people using their Wii, while we all wait for the next AAA title to be released.

A few games on the site are currently using the system. The newest game to use the system is LightSprites from Hero Interactive, sponsored by the well known armorgames.com. Check out these other games that also use bagunk’s high score api.

Bubble Tanks
Captain Coppergravel
LightSprites

We’ve recently released a high score system that easily integrates into your web games and submits your players high score’s to bagunk’s servers. Just check out the developers page for details and documentation. It’s easy and free!

Well, it’s been a long time in the making but finally, Alien Abduction II should be coming out within a week. Already, nearly everything is completed with nothing left but difficulty tweaking and a few audio changes.

Alien Abduction II follows the never released Alien Abduction I, in which you must abduct people while staying out of sight of the agents. If an agent spots you, you can drop ANYTHING on them to kill them. Everything, from igloos to people, can double as weapons when dropped from on high.

The game will feature 10 unique levels (4 from the unreleased AAI game), numerous enemies aside from agents including tanks and hell demons, and various other twists. The game will tie into Bagunk’s very brand new High Score System, making it the first game to promote the API. The game also sports an “unlock” mode where you can spend bonus points to purchase content that didn’t make it into the game. This includes the elusive “bonus” level and the original ship design.

Below are 3 screenshots of some of the new levels:

What components make a web game great are different for everyone. Gameplay, graphics, story, even their level of addictiveness are all parts of the experience. For me it’s a meld of simplicity, graphics and sense of humor.

Since I was a little gamer growing up on Atari and Sega Genesis, I’ve always liked arcade style games. As we’ve moved toward complex first person shooter games, I keep finding myself gravitating toward those simpler times. Taking a new twist on classic games like Pong and Tetris, for instance, is a sure fire way to create an enjoyable, addicting game that I can’t stop playing. When you add that simplicity to a beautiful design, like Flow does so well, it brings the classic into a whole new realm.

But aside from that, games that inject a sense of humor or sarcasm into my day have my automatic approval. Though I can’t seem to win the McDonald’s Video Game, I still love its weird take on consumerism and our fast food nation.

So on that note I reveal the new Editor’s Top Ten:

• Flow
• The Fancy Pants Adventure
• Bubble Islands
• Bugs
• McDonald’s Video Game
• South Park Dodge Ball
• Club Penguin
• Dodge That Anvil!
• Acid Factory
• Bauns

But what is your top ten?

Well, I’ve been thinking recently that I should search for some good, new, and fresh winter games and post them here for you guys. However, I’m too lazy to do that, so instead you will all have to deal with some old ones that have been posted here for some time. Ok, so one or two have been only recently posted, but some that are about to be featured are as ancient as Bagunk itself…

But like many great web games on the internets, you may have overlooked these fine snow time masterpieces, and so you should be thanking me for shoving them back in your face.

The first of which is Aggressive Alpine Skiing. I can only describe it as skiing meets Japanese crack- it’s delicious and hypnotic music will suck you in and never let truly quit, only promise family members and loved ones that you can quit anytime. You can ski jump into outer space to collect happy smiling stars- that’s a wonderful thing.

For a more casual and laid back drug of choice, I recommend Snow Day. It feels like a game right out of Orisinal with it’s slumber inducing soft music and simple addictive gameplay. Chuck the ice cubes into clouds to keep the snow falling and school from returning.

Requested feature: If creating snow clouds should fail, shouldn’t we just be able to call in sick?

A toxic spill has just occurred at the chemical plant you work at. Your boss and co-workers are mutated and there’s a fatal green acid leaking everywhere. Nothing could be more aggravating on a Monday morning.

That’s the story behind the action game Acid Factory. Harry the smiling, goggled lab worker is stranded in a toxic place of work and has to gather battery power to get his portal out up and running. Cruise through the factory gathering batteries while avoiding zombified co-workers, acid monster blobs, robots gone awry and pools of acid. Conserve your precious air supply by getting though the level quickly for futher added points and health. With 24 levels to complete, the game only gets more challenging.

Everything is pretty straightforward at first glance (the zombies are slow moving and the batteries are initially easy to get) until you learn that the acid is more dangerous than meets the eye. Acid pools will kill you immediately and touching any of the various monsters will seriously deplete your health. However, if you do become victim to the acid expect to see a clever death scene, like Harry’s skeleton floating to the surface of an acid bath. Good times!

Well, our friends over at JayIsGames.com are at it again with yet another competition in the spirit of the first. If you don’t know about the JayIsGames Competition #2 and you’re a developer, get your ass over there and check out all the sweet prizes you may be missing out, including cash prizes and 2 Flash 8 Professional licenses. So why are you still reading this? Go check it out!

Sigh, it’s been a regrettably long time since we’ve been able to get some work done on the site, most of which is due to a freak racquetball accident in which I broke my left hand.

But now the cast is off and my hand, though previously limp, casted, and unable to type- is reborn anew, now with the strength of two hands!

So expect a lot more to be coming out for Bagunk. I make here now yet another unbreakable oath to continue posting to this blog and developing great features for Bagunk- several of which are about to be released. We’ve also got a complete overhaul and redesign of the site underway which is planned for release at the end of February, so keep on the watch for that.

Long live Bagunk!

Club Penguin, an interactive gaming wonderland from New Horizon Interactive out of Canada, is blazing the path for the next generation of online gamers. In this virtual world users choose and name a penguin and enter an interactive island where they can explore, meet other penguins and play games. The world is targeted toward 7-12 year olds but even adults can appreciate the quirky graphics and smart mini-games.

After the controversy surrounding Myspace and protecting its underaged users, smart developers are thinking outside the box and creating interactive communities that cater to the growing number of pre-teen internet users. They’re also grooming the next generation of online gamers.

Most of the games in Club Penguin are simple and addictive, with digital versions of board games like Mancala and Connect 4 making an appearance along with games in-sync with the interactive world. Penguins, for instance, can have an inner tube race down a snowy hill or a hockey game on an ice rink, all playing alongside other users.

The other side of Club Penguin is interacting with your enviroment. Penguins can chat with other penguins, walk freely around their virtual world, go in and out of buildings and even buy some penguin swag with coins earned by playing games.

The concept may have been used before but Club Penguin is taking it to a new level by making a virtual world that is both appealing and safe for kids. In a few years their users will be graduating into more diverse online gaming.

Club Penguin is free to use for people of all ages, but to take advantage of all its features requires full membership and a small fee. Check out Club Penguin for fun, winter themed games or introduce it to a young gamer near you.

Check out this video of someone’s hard work in the game “Linerider”. This is amazing!

A little over a year ago a small game was introduced for the PS2 called “Guitar Hero”. It quickly became a classic on the PS2 and instantly started attracting people who normally don’t play games. Of corse, with success comes copy cat games. Here are two games (both free) that are similar to Guitar Hero. One as a download and one as a flash game.

Frets on Fire
Frets on Fire is an application you can download to your PC or Mac. It includes a few songs and you can also add your own custom songs to the list. You can play with your keyboard on your desktop or choose the option to pick your keyboard upside down and play it like a guitar. Overall this game is pretty polished and I like the idea of being able to add your own songs to the game as this will add re-play value.

Tenacious D- Devil My Fry
The second game on our list today is “Tenacious D- Devil My Fry”. Although not as fleshed out as Frets of Fire, it’s completely done in flash which is nice because you don’t have to download anything to your computer (nice for at the office). Of corse all of the character design and animation is great and the majority of the themes are pretty funny. It’s not much of a comparison to Frets or Fire, but it’s good to see a band promote their new movie with a fun flash game.

Bonus Round
The Nintendo DS is aimed at the same audience as we’re trying to target on bagunk so I thought another music game is worth mentioning to our users who also have this portable wonder. The game is called “Elite Beat Agents”. It recently scored a 9.5 over at IGN (the highest rated game for the DS thus far). I picked it up and immediately started enjoying myself. Some of the songs are pretty easy, but the later ones get outright frantic as you try to keep up with the beats on the screen. It really is a good time (one of the best times I’ve had with my DS thus far- and there have been a lot of them). Check out the video below for a small glimpse at one of the games earlier levels.

Another amazing review is on JayIsGames.com, this one is on “The Missile Game 3D”. If you haven’t played the game, go do so now!

BusterBot (who submitted the game to Bagunk) commented that he thought the title was a little odd. Here’s what the author, Damien, had to say:

My cousin had already made the Missile Game and the Missile Game 2, these were
both sidescrollers, where your missile is stuck at a consistent speed and
you had to dodge the oncoming obstacles. We agreed that I should make the
3rd in the series called “The Missile Game 3″, but because it was 3D I
thought I’d chuck that in the title aswell, which explains the slightly odd
name “The Missile Game 3D”.

So there you have it. You can check out the review HERE.

Squares 2, the slick retro creation of Gavin Shapiro, is a quick, addictive game, calling you back to beat your last score or trump your friend’s high score.

The object is simple: use your mouse to move your black square along collecting smaller black squares and dodging the deadly red ones. If you so much as graze a red square you’re toast.

But various powerups and powerdowns change gameplay as you go. If you grab a black circle, the game goes into slow motion. Red circles, however, cause you to lose points. Certain squares make you to grow or shrink by 40%, while other ‘evil squares’ make every square on the board an enemy. Just when you think you own the game, a new challenge comes your way.

I love the stylish, retro feel of the graphics and the arcade-reminiscent gameplay. Squares 2 is the kind of game you could play for a few seconds or a few hours. Try it for yourself!

In Airport security, you race against an ever-grumbling line of passengers trudging through your checkpoint. What’s worse, the security measures change all the time! One second you’ll be confiscating shoes and the next you’ll be taking iPods. If the line gets too backed up or you let too many illegal items slip by, “you’re fired” as the saying goes.

The timing is perfect on this one, released shortly before the gubernatorial elections. The game’s authoring company, Persuasive Games has quite the melting pot of clients – from the food industry to automakers to (surprise!) political groups. Their technique to “influence players to take action through gameplay” is genius if you think about it. Who would rather read a newspaper over playing a game regarding the same issue?

What I would like to see in the game is a wider array of objects passengers carry on them. I’m talking more realism – take me for instance. Typically in my carry-on are not iPods, lipstick or toothpaste, but everyday things like Drano, ninja stars and llama pelts. Those airline blankets just don’t cut it.