Amazon returns today with a set of lightning deals on Wii games and accessories. Today's main deal is nothing amazing, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection at $13.98, so here's hoping something special comes down the line on the lightning deals, eh?

The list of clues so far:

6:00 AM PDT - Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 - $19.97

10:00 AM PDT - It's NOT a lightsaber... honest!
I'd like to imagine this would be No More Heroes, but I'm going to guess it's something lame like this instead.

11:00 AM PDT - I promise this blob isn't poisonous
Really at a loss for this one. I was thinking "de Blob", but that hasn't been released yet.

12:00 Noon PDT - Perfect your polysyllabic proficiency
I would guess one of the myriad brain training games.

1:00 PM PDT - Racing fans, start your engines
Mario Kart?

3:00 PM PDT - Carpe Diem does not mean 'Fish of the Day'
Not a clue

5:00 PM PDT - Batter up!
Could be Mario Super Sluggers or MLB Power Pros, but it could just as easily be Little League World Series '08


And that's it so far. The clues seem a lot more cryptic this time, although that might be because when they did the lightning deals with Blizzard, it's not like they had a large range of products to choose from so they were pretty easily figured out.

From the realm of the "meh" and the "what the hell were they thinking", today's Amazon deal at least moves into the recognizable, even if it doesn't come across as a huge deal. Today you can get yourself a pristine copy of Battlefield:Bad Company for $39.99 plus free shipping. Follow the exploits of Anthony Hopkins as he trains Chris Rock to walk the walk and talk the talk of the CIA.


Hilarity is sure to ensue

...wait? This isn't just a shitty movie game? And the multiplayer experience is supposed to be pretty fun? Well, I suppose if you were looking to get it anyway there's nothing wrong with saving some money, right?

Amazon's deals have been pretty "meh" lately, and today's deal does nothing to change that fact. Today's deal is Shattered Suns for $17.99. It claims to be a deep and intuitive space RTS on a grand scale, complete with ship designing, tech trees, and everything else usually standard for the genre. Unfortunately, nothing really works well, and it's not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Also, ships are powered by mustard.


Pardon me sir, do you happen to have any... oh.. forget it.

What I especially love is how the box art tries to appear completely legitimate, going so far as to completely copy the look and feel of the "Games for Windows" logo that shows up on the top of most games. Good going marketing team! Maybe you can fool people into thinking someone would actually endorse your game!

Anyway, if you're really looking for a big space RTS that's NOT sponsored by the French's corporation, I would recommend Sins of a Solar Empire. Sure, it's more expensive at $36.99, but it has the slight advantage of actually being, you know, fun.

Robots. Is there anything they can't do? From vacuuming floors, to building cars, to putting the little plastic nubs on the end of your shoelaces, robots have been able to take over most any job they need to. It's only a logical extension then that with the dangers involved in being a secret agent, this task would too fall to a robot.

Amazon is helping you all get in on the ground floor of this new wave of spying by offering Secret Agent Clank for $26.99 + Free Super Saver Shipping today. For those of you playing through the latest Ratchet and Clank mini-adventure on PSN, perhaps this would interest you as well, although reviews have been sort of around the middle ground. Granted, Clank is no Daniel Craig, but he gets the job done.


The FUTURE!

It's only a matter of time before the robots manage to take over completely, so you might as well enjoy yourself before they invent some sort of game playing robot and make us all completely irrelevant.

Normally when I do these sorts of posts, I try to spotlight games that are slightly obscure, well crafted, or try to do something different from the rest of the pack. And while Legend of the Red Dragon may be rather obscure nowadays, it certainly wasn't back when it first released. Nor does LoRD do anything really special or exciting, and there is only so much you can gather from the sparse text descriptions and ANSI graphics. However, what makes LoRD important as a game is how the concepts found within it were worked into other games down the line.

Legend of the Red Dragon is a text based RPG and was played by dialing into a BBS. If you have no clue what a BBS is, then congratulations on being born in the 90's. Aside from offering chat, the latest in shareware downloads, and message boards-- which were all local for the most part, very few bulletin boards had the resources to go national -- there were also simple games that could be played by the users, called Door Games.


It's like I'm really there!

Since BBSes were usually accessed using some sort of terminal software over a phone line, there was no way to display hi-res graphics, or have complex battle systems or anything we take for granted nowadays. LoRD was your typical RPG. You start a character with nothing but a stick and the clothes on your back, and head into town, hearing rumors that the Red Dragon has reappeared. Each day you were allowed a certain number of Forest Fights, which you would use to battle monsters, gain Exp and gold, and possibly run into special events. If this sounds familiar, it's most likely because you've played Kingdom of Loathing, which uses a very similar system with its Adventures.

When in combat, your options were to either attack, run, or use one of your special skills. Upon starting the game you are asked your preference, and can basically choose to become a Warrior, Mage, or Rogue, each with their own set of skills. After you gain a set amount of experience, you return to town, challenge your current master to a battle, and upon winning reach the next level. And so, as time went on, you would slowly continue on your way until reaching Level 12.

At level 12, a new option appears in the woods, to search for the Red Dragon itself. This was a difficult fight depending on how well prepared, and how lucky you ended up being, and upon defeating the dragon, your name would be announced in the news, and your character would be reverted to Lv 1 once again, albeit with a shiny new title. Thus the cycle would continue.


Giggity, giggity

Aside from the normal game however, there was a barmaid or bard to seduce and possibly marry depending on your gender, a PvP system for fighting those who had gone to sleep in the fields, and possibly the best thing about LoRD, The Other Places. When LoRD was written, the author made it possible for people to write their own modules that could be added on, using the stats and information from a LoRD character in brand new adventures that could even tie in with the main game. Thus did my character end up visiting the Death Star and buying a lightsaber from a vending machine, adopting countless orphans from the Orphanage Across the Tracks, fight gladiators for gold and glory in The Arena, bet on horse races at the Racetrack along with countless other adventures.

Unfortunately, it has gotten difficult in recent years to find anyone with a decent copy of LoRD, much less one with a lot of the great extra modules. The original creator does not own the rights to the game anymore, and it is still sold as BBS software, despite the lack of popularity of bulletin boards in this day and age. Retrograde BBS is still running, although now as a telnet-accessible bbs at rgbbs.org. Aside from that, however, is a web-based fan project, based on the original game with countless additions and enhancements, Legend of the Green Dragon. LoGD is even licensed under Creative Commons, and it is possible to get the source code for free in order to modify it and run your own version of the game if you'd like. So in theory, yes. You could create "Legend of the Green Robot" if you had the time and determination, along with a web server to run it.

In the end, LoRD was a game that had everything going for it back when technology was more limited, and is a great glimpse at how far we've come in online RPG territory in just the last 15 years.

Well, between being away for Baltimore Nerdfest aka Otakon and Amazon's complete lack of good deals lately, I've been sort of neglecting this. But no more! Today's Amazon deal is a fairly solid albeit somewhat easy RPG from Atlus. Summon Night: Twin Age will set you back a grand total of $17.99 today.

For those of you who have played the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story games on the Game Boy Advance, this game is a bit different. Whereas the GBA games had a battle system akin to a Tales of.. game, this entire game is played via the touchscreen. Tapping on enemies to attack, move, cast spells, etc. This may or may not be a deal breaker for some of you. Item creation still plays a decent part in the game, and the ally AI isn't completely stupid, so it's not bad overall.

However, there is one distressing thing that's been brought to light by the ever-helpful Amazon reviews.


WOOOOORRRDDDDSSSS!


Lots of talking, June 27, 2008
By James Riek -
Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars
This game has a lot of talking. To me this game is more complicated than the normal rpg game. I don't think it was worth the money I paid for it.


Frankly, I am appalled. An RPG with tons of dialogue? Blasphemy. If we continue down this path, soon we'll have first person shooters with crates everywhere, racing games with rubberband AI, and rhythm games where they throw in extra notes unrelated to the music just to justify a higher difficulty level!
Is that really the world you want to live in?