I've completed Adventure and Heroic Frog modes, aced all 70 levels of Challenge mode, and completed the Iron Frog gaunlet a few times. The frog has his top hat and monacle, and the guard is grinning in his tuxedo and rainbow wig.
The "end" seems so much more anti-climactic than the orignal Zuma ending. Is there nothing else in the game? I feel like there's something more that I'm missing.
Iron Frog: 114 510 Best time: 13:48 The high score and the best time came together from different plays, acutally got stunned at the best time as my previous best was somewhere above 15 min. Challenge high scores: Level 30 1 161 996 Level 15 671 930 Level 50 652 857
Iron Frog 2 only 126 329 (hate it!), all the others above 300k (level 3 390k, level 9 322k)
>It was Bejeweled, and with it, Popcap basically invented the genre known as “casual gaming”.
Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Puyo Pop would like to have a word with you, Brian.
While Popcap may have ran with it and pioneered putting out lots of this sort of thing in the past decade, it still follows in the footsteps of these beasts.
Dr. Mario was the sort of game you always made the mistake of introducing your mom to as a kid. Soon you have saturday afternoons where the ONLY way for you to get on the NES and play games was to play 2-player Dr. Mario. It was the game that actually forced you to go outside and...ugh...play in the REAL WORLD (THE HORROR!) while your mom was hogging all of the video games.
Your Gameboy on car trips wasn't always safe, either. You wake up from napping for several hours in the car out of sheer boredom, and try to turn on your Gameboy only to find about 20 seconds later that your mom has drained all of the batteries playing Tetris in the passenger seat.
And Puyo Pop? if you were into any sort of puzzle gaming in the 16-bit console era, you've played it. After all, it was practically swiped by two different game companies and pretty much cloned, with their own characters inserted (Kirby's Avalanche for SNES, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine for Genesis).
...just thought I'd drop some TruFax. Continue with what you're doing.
>It was Bejeweled, and with it, Popcap basically invented the genre known as “casual gaming”.
Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Puyo Pop would like to have a word with you, Brian.
I'd argue that the fact those were console games are exactly what prevented them from being "casual". Casual games are games you can waste time at work with. A console is already a huge barrier to entry: Aunt Sally's not going to go out and buy a Nintendo Entertainment System and hook it up to her TV and learn how to operate a controller. Put your example in context: NES was marketed at families and kids.
Back then, those games you mentioned weren't considered "casual" games. They were considered games. And they cost the same as other games.
I stand by my statement: Popcap invented casual gaming; cheap (or free), work on any PC, accessible, and Grandma could pick them up and play them without assistance from little Joey.
It depends on your discussion. I agree with you Brian, but the language has changed such that the phrase 'casual game' doesn't just mean one thing anymore. The literal and more correct meaning is that it's a marketplace or niche, as you describe it, and that was indeed invented by Popcap.
However, those games are all so similar, and utilize such uniform mechanics, that many have come to see the term 'casual ' as a gameplay genre which consists mostly of dropping and matching things. This may not be as correct, but I would argue that more people get that definition than the more correct one.
In that sense, Popcap is an imitator, as they never invented any mechanics, and the roots of their games can be seen going way back into video gaming history.
You and Hammy are on opposite sides of a semantic wall. You see these things from an industry perspective, but he sees them from a fan perspective, and casual means two completely different things therein.
Comments
The "end" seems so much more anti-climactic than the orignal Zuma ending. Is there nothing else in the game? I feel like there's something more that I'm missing.
Best time: 13:48
The high score and the best time came together from different plays, acutally got stunned at the best time as my previous best was somewhere above 15 min.
Challenge high scores:
Level 30 1 161 996
Level 15 671 930
Level 50 652 857
Iron Frog 2 only 126 329 (hate it!), all the others above 300k (level 3 390k, level 9 322k)
Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Puyo Pop would like to have a word with you, Brian.
While Popcap may have ran with it and pioneered putting out lots of this sort of thing in the past decade, it still follows in the footsteps of these beasts.
Dr. Mario was the sort of game you always made the mistake of introducing your mom to as a kid. Soon you have saturday afternoons where the ONLY way for you to get on the NES and play games was to play 2-player Dr. Mario. It was the game that actually forced you to go outside and...ugh...play in the REAL WORLD (THE HORROR!) while your mom was hogging all of the video games.
Your Gameboy on car trips wasn't always safe, either. You wake up from napping for several hours in the car out of sheer boredom, and try to turn on your Gameboy only to find about 20 seconds later that your mom has drained all of the batteries playing Tetris in the passenger seat.
And Puyo Pop? if you were into any sort of puzzle gaming in the 16-bit console era, you've played it. After all, it was practically swiped by two different game companies and pretty much cloned, with their own characters inserted (Kirby's Avalanche for SNES, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine for Genesis).
...just thought I'd drop some TruFax. Continue with what you're doing.
Back then, those games you mentioned weren't considered "casual" games. They were considered games. And they cost the same as other games.
I stand by my statement: Popcap invented casual gaming; cheap (or free), work on any PC, accessible, and Grandma could pick them up and play them without assistance from little Joey.
However, those games are all so similar, and utilize such uniform mechanics, that many have come to see the term 'casual ' as a gameplay genre which consists mostly of dropping and matching things. This may not be as correct, but I would argue that more people get that definition than the more correct one.
In that sense, Popcap is an imitator, as they never invented any mechanics, and the roots of their games can be seen going way back into video gaming history.
You and Hammy are on opposite sides of a semantic wall. You see these things from an industry perspective, but he sees them from a fan perspective, and casual means two completely different things therein.
Just for breaking your record.
It's free today
Inka Shaka Zuma