Remember The Empire Strikes Back? The boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, protesting Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Airplane? Defender, Battlezone and Pac-Man? Zork? John Lennon’s murder? Iron Maiden’s debut? AC/DC’s “Back in Black” ? “Disco Sucks?” (granted that was on a sign in 79’s Disco Demolition Night but the sentiment still rings true) Mount St. Helens eruption? The US ice hockey team beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics? Who shot J.R.? Well all of these were in 1980, not just the 80’s but the turn of the decade. There was another thing that debuted in 1980 and that was the Rubik’s Cube. Invented in ‘74 by a Hungarian sculptor, it was sold to Ideal Toys in 1980. As Wikipedia describes it – In a classic Rubik’s Cube, each of the six faces is covered by 9 stickers, among six solid colors (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colors. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid color.
Archive for the ‘Puzzle’ Category
(xblig) Cubage – Like, totally Rubik’s!
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009Pure Sudoku – Achieve a Zen-like oneness with your computer.
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
First I have to say, I HATE SUDOKU! And why, I hear you cry. Because you could almost have it beat and then realize that you have a duplicate number somewhere and it all completely unravels. Okay I hope this little outburst doesn’t have any bearing on the review. In fact Pure Sudoku is perfect, even though I’m angry at the game, I’m not angry at the program. Pure Sudoku is pretty nice, of course it is just a game of Sudoku. However the visuals are decent. And it is easy to play.
Okay according to Wikipedia Sudoku is a logic-based combinatorial number-placement puzzle. Number puzzles similar to this were available in 19th century newspapers. Eventually it got transformed into what it was today. It was introduced in Japan in ‘84 which gave it its Japanese sounding name Sudoku. If you really want a history I suggest you read the Wikipedia entry on it, and then search through the net, and maybe your local Library.
(xblig) Penga’s Peril – XBLCG
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009The wonderful world of box pushing…
Remember the days when box pushing was fun? Slide a box here, move there, make sure you don’t trap yourself. Ahh, the joys of being a warehouse keeper. What? Those days aren’t over. You can experience them over and over again. That’s right be it PC or Mac, XBOX or Playstation, you can have the fun again of playing the box pusher. You know the game I’m talking about. Sokoban and it’s millions of variations. In fact even yours truly had the opportunity to create levels for a 3d Sokoban-style game called Grek’s Puzzle Challenge (the last game on the page). Originally created in 1980 by some Japanese dude (you can read the Wikipedia entry as linked above), it has come to be loved and played by millions. It’s no surprise, then, that it should come to Xbox Live Community games, in the form of Penga’s Peril.