Haven't had much time to play lately... I have a feeling that I will clear my backlog of games once I retire in 20+ years.
However, my curiosity did get the better of me and I picked up a Game Wave (
http://playgamewave.com/). Apparently TRU in the US was selling the the System off for 19.99$ earlier this year, while here in Canada TRU are selling them for 49.99$ CDN. The games and 2 pack of remotes at TRU are half-price 14.99$ CDN. At the 49.99$, it's not bad. If you can pick it up for 19.99$ I would recommend it unless you're short on space. (Err, not sure if I would pay the full 99$ price however.) The system comes with four remotes, batteries, RCA cables, SVideo cable, and a trivia game.
Anyway, the site has more information, videos of all of the games, etc..
I got the system yesterday so I tried the games:
-4 degrees trivia games (Volumes 1 and 2): Not bad for a trivia game. Reminds me a bit of scene-it, except you don't need a game board and everyone plays at the same time.
-Zap 21: it's blackjack.
There are two modes, but we only played the regular blackjack.
-Lock 5: Take Yatzee. Replace the dice with a slot machine with 5 slots. Throw in a "wild" and a "worthless" in the mix of possible values (along with 1-6) . Everyone works off the the same numbers in the slot machine. People can lock the slots they want to keep. After each round (3 rolls of the slot machine) the players choose from the scoreboard what points to put their sets of numbers to. Since everyone is playing off of the same set of rolls, people could theoretically copy each other. The game tries to prevent this by randomly selecting a possible combination on each player's scorecard for bonus points for the first 5 rounds. (I.E. Player 1 could get +10 if they do 3 of a kind, another player could get +10 for the "set of 5"s, etc.) The bonus changes each round.
-Letter Zap: Bookworm (except you can also select letters that are joined diagonally). Two modes: In the first mode, each player has their own (different) 4x4 grid (each round ends when a player gets to 10 words or when the timer runs out). In the 2nd mode everyone shares a large grid, once a letter is used it gets changed. It's more competitive as more then one player can try and use the same letter, but the first player to complete their word will be able to use the letter.
-Gemz: (Bejewelled) There are two modes again. I think the first one is plain single player bejewelled? The 2nd mode is 4 player bejewelled. The twist: each player is given the jewel they need to score against. After they score, they are given another jewel to score against. If there is no possible way of scoring, the player can wait or change jewels which costs 50 points.
-Click: (Wheel of Fortune?) You are given a category and a puzzle to solve at the beginning of each round. Then you either pick a letter (consonant), or "channel surf". If you pick a letter that is in the phrase, you get 300 points per letter and given the option to solve the puzzle before play moves onto the next player. If you pick a letter that is not in the phrase, play moves onto the next player. Channel surfing is like the "Chance" cards in monopoly, you can get something good or bad happen. You can get points, lose points, lose a turn, get a visual or audible clue, etc. If a player knows the phrase but it isn't their turn, they can "click" in. This will allow them to jump in after the current's player turn and attempt to answer the puzzle. Answering is done by having the player say the phrase out loud and then having everyone else confirm that the player guessed correctly. If the player guessed right, he gets points, if wrongly, he looses points.
*Phiew*
All in all, not bad. Again, I might not recommend it for full price, but under 49.99$ it's not bad. The bulk of the games are geared towards the board game market and we'll probably take it out when we have some friends over (and they're all Wii'ed out). The games themselves are programmed in Lua with most animations being mpg files (playable in mplayer). I tried to play one of the games on my computer using a Lua environement, but it appears that they customized their Lua compiler. Hmm... It might be interesting to hack and see just how much this thing could do...
With all that said, next gaming session will get devoted to my SGx.
