A review for Speed Thrasher was posted on a Czech gaming site a few months ago, and unfortunately I had no idea what it said. Thankfully, Pavel Polak has provided an English translation, which I have edited for clarity.

Original Review (Czech)

Zak McThrasher is a villain to some people, but he's a hero for others. The local sheriff dislikes him and spends a lot of time trying to catch him. Zak is usually faster and escapes to the other county. Today Zak takes another try and it depends on you to determine whether or not he is sucessful and how many points he'll earn for his mad ride.

Speed Trasher is racing game, because you drive the car that drags our skating hero. The rope moves from side to side while you try to jump the skater over roofs, citizens, or bumpers. After some time, the cops start to chase you. In this part of game, forget about any tricks and try your best to cross the county line as quickly as possible. When you escape, the game ends. (cont)

In spite of its simplicity and only one level, this game can be played for a long time. As soon as you learn to drive, you would start with tricks training. They help you to increase your score and there are really a lot of tricks available. The maximum speed is 100 km/h, but hitting beer trucks allows you to increase your speed beyond that. On the other hand, hitting vehicles decreases your speed. Part two is a test of skill, where you must ride among road debris. If you want to have better control of the skater, you can use the grass "sidewalks".

The comic-like graphics are very nice and the game hero looks very similar to Johnny Bravo from the anime series of the same name. It's a pity that there are no taunts in Johnny's style. The music is not so good, but is acceptable. The worst part is the sound: the engine and horn sounds are of PC speaker quality, at a time when everyone is using 7.1 systems.

Speed Trasher is average technically, but it has variety. To reach a sucessful ending, you should do a lot of training, and even then success is not guaranteed. During training you'll find lots of hidden "features"; you should learn to use them all, because this will increase your score. This is why you won't be able to play this game just once.

1-2-3 Bumblebee is a computer game designed to help toddlers learn how to use the mouse.

Download 1-2-3 Bumblebee



It was originally made for my nephew, David Lee Peer.

My game Speed Thrasher is on the cover disk for a German game magazine called Bravo Screenfun. I am told it has a circulation of around 300,000.

Way cool!

I haven't made much progress on 1-2-3 Bumblebee. I decided to discard the little concert screen onto my heap of recyclable ideas, so I will go with something that fits the rest of the game better. I'm shooting to finish it this weekend so it can be given out for Christmas.

Since I don't have much to show right now, I'll dust off another game I started many months ago, tentatively titled A Most Dangerous Crosswalk. It's a one-key game where you control a "Walk/Don't Walk" sign at an intersection in a town full of very dumb pedestrians. This, of course, leads to much blood being spilled! The neat part of it is in the clues you look for to predict when cars drive by.

This is another game that I have tried very hard to abandon. Unfortunately, I played it again tonight, and am finding that it actually has some promise. So, I might give in to the temptation and finish it up as a mini-game.

Over Thanksgiving I decided to dust off a game called 1-2-3 Robot, that I originally created for my 2 year old nephew. On further examination, it seemed a bit dry, so I replaced the mouse pointer with a little animated bumblebee and added some colorful shapes. This suggested the new title, which sounds more fun (whee!).

It's a simple game: there are 4 big squares, and when the child clicks 1, then 2, then 3, there's a little song that is played.

Here's a rough drawing of part of the end sequence.



This is really the only thing left to finish, so I'll probably have the game up for download this weekend.

OddBob at remakes.org says this about  Blondie Goes on a Date:

Blondie Goes On A Date is a wonderfully twisted parody of the old Commodore 64 game "Barbie" from the brain of Joe Lesko. I really don't want to spoil too much of this, but its genius in its own little way.

And Anton Bursch really digs  Barbarian Roller Rally:

It is a very simple but perfectly made game... Yeah, it isn't huge like Half Life 2, but it's fun in the way that the good ol' atari games were fun. You remember. Simple game play, but solid and challenging.... You will laugh at how funny and cool it is each level until you just crack a rib laughing and cheering in the final level.

What Sim Beverage lacks in graphics, it makes up for in realism. Because it is real -- it's essentially a client that connects to my beverage research lab. Yes, believe it or not, my day job is at a facility that, among other things, uses high-end computers to study the effect of different consumable liquids on human behavior.

If you're familiar with UNIX, you can probably figure out how it works. I just ask that you don't mess with my local account (especially the secret 'pr0n' stash ;)

This was my entry for Game-in-a-Day #17.


Download Sim Beverage (450 KB)