Are you tired of plain-old Tetris? Do simple square shapes bore you? Give Stateris a try.

Take a the timeless classic video game of Mario Brothers, then add the innovative modern game Portal, and you get a great game that I’d love to play MariO.

I hope they follow through with this mashup!

I just ran across a fun new flash game by Jonas Richner. The game is called e7, and even though it’s nothing elaborate, it really pulls you in. You’re goal is to save the earth…

“It’s force is huge
Earth will be dust”

You’re dropped off in a pod of some sorts by your spaceship onto a planet which is kind of acts like big bowl of jello. It shifts and pulls based on how you move your pod over it. Your missions is to head east and find a missile pointed at earth. You need to navigate your pod through the planet avoiding obstacles and enemy ship lasers. Your weapon is your pod which you use to smash enemies by jumping and bouncing off of hills and valleys on the planet. It sounds simple, and looks simple, but really is a beautiful game. The soft soundtrack rounds everything out nicely and puts you into the world of the game.

Play e7

Have you ever wanted to run your favorite old-school Nintendo characters through the original Super Mario Brothers? Well wait no more, you now can with Super Mario Crossover. You have a choice of Mario, Link from Zelda, Bill R. (didn’t know that was his name) from Contra, Simon from Castelvania, Mega Man or Samus from Metroid. The great thing about using these other characters, is you get to use their own weapons instead of just jumping on things with Mario. The author of the game says:

This is my first game, and I have worked on it for over a year. It has been a long journey, but I think you will see that all of my effort has paid off. I have recreated the entire game of Super Mario Bros, but now you can play as different characters. Each character plays just like they do in their original games with a few modifications to make the experience better.

This is my tribute to classic NES games, and anyone who grew up playing Nintendo should enjoy it. Now please enjoy the hell out of this game and experience Super Mario Bros in a whole new way!

And yes, I know that controlling Simon Belmont in the air isn’t easy, but that’s what makes him special. And he can double jump to help you control it a bit more.

I highly recommend playing this with a gamepad if you have one, but you can still enjoy it with a keyboard.

Go take it for a spin (newgrounds.com), it’s fun to play an old favorite game from a different perspective.

I just ran across one of the coolest uses of Google Earth I’ve seen. Planet in Action has created an online simulation built on top of Google Earth. You can pilot several barges, a re-fuel ship, a container ship, a cruise ship, or even a blimp. This looks to be a proof-of-concept type game according the the banners they have plastered on the boats you get to drive.

Investors wanted to bring this game to the next level.

Regardless, it is a pretty neat use of the Google Earth technology. I can’t way to see what games come out of this when/if they get their inivestors.

It’s that time of year again folks. The Finalists for the 2009 Independent Games Festival have been announced. Ever since I discovered this festival a few years back, I’ve been coming back yearly to see the new games that make it to the finals, and then ultimately win the competition. This year’s winners will be announced in late March, but definitely go and play with the games that are listed (many are a free download). This competition usually has some really creative games that are very different (FUN!) from most mainstream games available.

I just spent about a half hour playing this beautifully designed (and addictive) flash game, Auditorium.

The game is all about directing a stream of particles using small spheres that redirect them in different ways. You want to get the particles running through audio containers that play different parts of the beautiful soundtrack in the game. I guess this game is just a demo so far (only 3 levels). The developer promises up to 20 levels when this thing is done. Take a play, it will be tough to stop.

Remember the last Nintendo Cartridge Nintendo? This one takes it a step further, adding a controller and a screen to the package. Now you don’t even need to have a TV to play your cartridge-sized Nintendo. This one doesn’t look like you can play more than one game though. Oh well, it’s still pretty cool.

Just when you thought they couldn’t get any smaller, this guy (blog in French) mods an entire old school Nintendo Entertainment System to fit into a Super Mario Brothers Cartridge. Sweet!

This is nothing short of impressive. Nihilogic has written a partial level of the original Super Mario Brothers game in 14kb of code entirely with javascript! This is the technology that makes your websites work being used to write a game that was pretty cutting edge when it was released. Give it a try!

I ran across a really cool looking game tonight called Crayon Physics Deluxe. The game itself isn’t out yet, but you can download and play a prototype of the game (minus the “deluxe”) from the Kloonigames Blog. This looks pretty cool, and I’m looking forward to the release of the full version.

Crayon Physics Deluxe on a TabletPC

Awesome online game site, Play This Thing puts up a game and a review every day.

Some of my favorites:

• Good ole Desktop Tower Defense
  
• “The Most Sacrilegious Game Ever” Bible Fight

I really like these little game developer competitions. They usually have some nice results that are not only fun to play, but outside the realm of your typical games. Jayisgames.com recently had a competition where entries were judged on repeat plays. They wanted games that kept you coming back for more. The winners have been announced. The winning games are pretty fun, but be sure to scroll to the bottom and play all the entries.

This is somewhat along the lines of my previous old school computer games posts. Now it’s not just old computer games, but you can now play old school console games right inside your browser too. Nintendo 8 offers a nice list of your favorite NES games via java from inside your web browser. They all seem to work pretty well, but I did have a few issues getting used to the controls. Using a computer keyboard is a lot different than using a Nintendo controller!

Jack is back! The crazy pop-culture game You Don’t Know Jack is online again. These were originally CD-ROM party games back in the day. I can even remember playing an early Netshow version of these games in the mid 90′s, back before the dot.com boom (it took quite a while for them to load on dial-up). If I remember correctly, it used to be a multi-player game where you could screw your friends while playing. This new one is just the single-player version, but hopefully now that they seem to be releasing new episodes somewhat regularly the good ‘ole multi-player version will be back again soon.

I played a round, and it is a lot tougher than I remember! Maybe I’m not as quick as I used to be.