Games: Super Collapse 3

I downloaded this game at the same time as Peggle Nights (both were already paid for), but waited, as usual, for an opportune time before installing it. We had company (friends of my husband) downstairs where Al and I usually play together, so I agreed to install a new game.

Super Collapse 3 is a “match 3″ game, which I just learned is a type of game that goes back some two thousand years. After the fall of Rome, the idea of the game (no ancient gameboards survived) was preserved in medieval monasteries. Professors from England brought the game to America when they went to teach at Harvard. The games became very popular in America for the next two centuries. There was a popular match-3 game show in the 1950’s, but it was quickly cancelled after evidence surfaced that the producers had “fixed” the game.

I suppose there were so many inexpensive games available in the next few decades that match-3 games lost their popularity. I certainly don’t remember playing any, or even being aware of their existence, until Al started playing them on the computer. They’re relatively easy to create and easy to play.

Some of the match-3 games I have played previously (and reviewed here) are Luxor, Newton’s Nightmare, Ultra Block, and Mr. Peanut Matchup. Of these Super Collapse 3 is closest to Ultra Block, but unlike Ultra Block it has very “modes” of play. Classic mode is very similar to Ultra Block, though it differs in one helpful way: when there are no available moves the game speeds up (temporarily), so you not only don’t have to wait as long to make the next move, but you always know whether there is or isn’t a move available.

For the challenge of it

In a recent post I quoted mountaineer George Mallory’s famous line about why he climbed mountains: “Because it’s there.” The challenge drew him irresistibly, even to his death atop Mount Everest. While I like hiking, I’ve never been drawn to dangerous climbs. But I do respond to the challenge of a good puzzle.

My sons, especially my younger son Al, do not seem to feel the same way about challenges. I am annoyed when he helps me with a puzzle I’m working on, though I try to express appreciation because I know he means to be helpful. I do not want help, I want to solve it on my own. Some of that may be pride, but it is also because it is the challenge itself that appeals to me, and to the extent that hints reduce the difficulty of solving it, they reduce my pleasure in finding the solution.

Over the years I’ve noticed that some kinds of challenges appeal to me more than others. At one time, the idea of fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzles appealed to me. One sort has no picture, just a solid color, and only the shape of the pieces shows how to put it together. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there is The World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle, where every piece is exactly the same shape, and only the picture provides the solution - plus the puzzle is double-sided, with the same picture on both sides! But by the time I had money of my own to purchase such puzzles, I found I was no longer interested.

I enjoy difficult crossword puzzles, but if I spend an hour on a puzzle and have only come up with a few words, not enough to help me get any more, the puzzle is simply too hard for me. I will try even longer on an acrostic, but eventually I will give up on those also if too many clues are too obscure for me to come up with even a decent guess. I can do “cross-sums” puzzles, but I find that too often, I discover three quarters of the way through that I must have made some error in logic early on, and the only way to undo it is to start completely over. So I rarely start them at all.

One kind of puzzle I enjoy is computer programming, but never purely for the sake of the challenge itself. I like doing programming that provides a useful solution to a problem, or an entertaining game to play. I work at the application level, meaning the level where the program interacts with the user, rather than at the systems level where the program simply provides a platform for other developers to write their programs.

One kind of computer puzzle I have never found an interest in is hacking. The term hacker is often used in a pejorative sense, because some hackers have used their ability to alter hijack code for malicious purposes. But at root, hacking is simply figuring out the secrets that are coded into computers and not intended for anyone but the people who put them there to know. It’s not a challenge that appeals to me, but it has a very strong appeal to many people – at least to many young men (estimates of hacker demographics indicate that about 90% are male and median age is 25).

Movies: Song of the South

My husband has been telling me about this movie since we first started collecting Disney movies to play on our VCR. (We buy DVDs these days, but rarely get Disney movies anymore.) He had seen Song of the South on TV on “The Wonderful World of Disney”; I hadn’t even heard of it. (There were many movies I had never heard of – he says I was culturally deprived.)

As each classic Disney movie came out on video, we waited for Song of the South to hit the shelves. But it never happened; finally we realized it just wasn’t going to be released. There are all kinds of rumors about why it isn’t going to be released – or alternatively, that it is going to be released (always next year or the year after). The reasons for not releasing it have to do with the racial stereotypes it portrays, and apparently it has been controversial in this regard since its initial box office release.

My husband decries this sort of political correctness, pointing out that the black people in the movie are portrayed very positively. I’ve read similar opinions on websites regarding the movie. I also read one comment, from an “Anonymous African-American” who guesses that all such comments were written by white people, who have no idea why the racial stereotypes in the movie are so offensive. Unfortunately, this person doesn’t try to explain why they are.

Finally, today, I got to watch the movie. My husband has been downloading lots of TV shows and movies from the internet, and burning them to DVD. Apparently Disney had no problem releasing Song of the South in other countries, where the racial history of our own country does not provoke such controversy. These have been turned into bootleg versions of the movie, and Disney has (at least according to wikipedia) chosen not to take any legal action.

As this seems to be the only way to see the movie, and Disney evidently is more concerned about not officially releasing the movie than preventing it from being distributed, I was happy enough to sit down with my sons to finally watch it (my husband had to sleep before going to work for the night). My younger son was bored through the initial live-action sequences, but started enjoying it once some animation appeared.

Puzzles: Cube Eraser

When my younger son told me that the prize for selling at least one item in his school’s fundraiser was a Rubik’s Cube eraser, I wasn’t too excited. I’m not excited by school fundraisers to begin with, though I do take the brochures to work and leave them in the breakroom for my co-workers to browse through. (Throughout the fall months, there is a steady succession of fundraiser brochures for different schools and community groups, often including multiples of the same fundraiser because our department has a lot of parents of school-age kids.)

My son gets a lot of erasers in goodie bags at holidays, and I couldn’t see much reason to be excited about another one. They are bright and colorful and sometimes cute, in every imaginable shape and theme: Christmas trees, smileys, rainbows, basketballs… just take a look at an Oriental Trading catalog to find dozens more. But I’d never seen a Rubik’s Cube eraser. I wondered if it was supposed to go on the end of a pencil or not.

When the fundraiser items arrived today, I found a colorful rubber cube, but it didn’t look a bit like a Rubik’s Cube. And the packing list just called it a “Cube Eraser.” But he was thrilled with it, and promptly asked me to unwrap it so he could take it apart. Take it apart? How do you take an eraser apart? I thought it was just going to look like a puzzle, not actually be one.

Games: Peggle Nights

WARNING! WARNING! This game is addictive. If you continue reading, and are persuaded to get the game and play it, I am not responsible for how much time you spend playing it.

I always wanted to play pinball. But the real pinball machines, on the rare occasions I actually saw one, cost money to play. I liked trying even the little plastic toys that were sort of like pinball, but they didn’t have flashing lights and bells and free balls. And when I did get to try something with flippers at the bottom, I didn’t do well enough to give me any confidence that putting money in a pinball machine would be worth my while.

Fast forward a few decades. This spring, when Al had to have a root canal, we promised him a computer game if he could sit calmly through it. (He was quite worried, and he also gags easily when someone pokes around in his mouth – he had thrown up on the previous visit when they tried to take an X-ray.) He did amazingly well, and when the computer game he requested required making a commitment to purchase two more games in the future, I agreed.

But then we didn’t find any more games he wanted, even when his birthday came around. So I finally started looking through the games to see if there were any that I thought looked good. For him, that is – they were all kids games, mostly peopled by TV cartoon characters.

Of course, sometimes he and I do end up liking the same games, like Bookworm Adventure. When I read the description of Peggle Nights, I thought I might just like it myself. (Besides, it’s by Pop Cap Games, same as Bookworm Adventure.) I downloaded it without telling him about it, so that I could surprise him with it at an appropriate time. And when another game he wanted to play yesterday (free, online) turned out to require two email addresses (his, plus mine as a parent), rather than get him an email address I decided to install Peggle Nights.

It’s not exactly a pinball game – only one stage has actually had flippers (shaped like lobster claws, since the hero for that stage was a giant lobster). But it is about hitting pegs with a ball, and the ball bouncing from peg to peg, or bouncing off various obstacles, and getting points for what you hit. You want to hit all the orange pegs, but most of the pegs are blue. You get points for them too, but you want to hit them mostly to get them out of the way.

These cakes are out of this world

I found out today that my 17-year-old son is older than the Sci-Fi channel. He turned 17 in March, almost six months ago. The Sci-Fi channel just turned 17 today.

In recognition of that anniversary, they have a display of 17 sci-fi themed cakes. These are the kind of cakes I can only dream of making. Just look at the detail in that Minas Tirith cake! I’d hate to have to cut into it to serve a piece.

I’m really not much into cake. But I do like the Sci-Fi channel. We didn’t have it all that long before we had to drop it to save money. But it was long enough to become fans of Stargate SG-1 (and Stargate Atlantis). My husband watched some other shows as well, such as Eureka. Recently he discovered full-length episodes of Eureka he can watch on syfy.com (the Sci-Fi website).

But first we decided to check out earlier seasons from the library, so I could watch them as well. Last night we had a mini-marathon of Eureka, watching the pilot plus three more episodes from the first season. I had seen one of them, and occasionally walked through the room during other episodes. But I remembered little except that it was a kind of quirky show.

Games: Cranium Family Fun Game and Rack-O

Al asked for a Family Night, and the holiday tomorrow allowed for staying up late this evening playing games. So we gathered around the game table downstairs, and we picked out Cranium Family Fun Game as one mostly likely to work well for all ages and provide lots of fun and laughs.

Like most of Cranium’s games, this one has a number of different kinds of activities. Depending what color you land on, you pick out a card from one of four decks: Creative Cat, Word Worm, Data Head, or Star Performer. We quickly agreed that Data Head was the easiest category, generally depending more on knowledge than ability. Recognizing common objects from photos showing just a small detail is probably the hardest in that category, while the true/false questions and multiple choice were usually easy for all of us.

Word Worm is my favorite category, as I really like words. Spelling words backwards is not very challenging for any of us, but finding six words starting with six different letters (roll the letter dice to get your letters) in six specified categories can be quite a challenge. So much so, in fact, that we never managed before time was up.

Creative Cat and Star Performer require more ability and creativity, and generally are where the laughs come in. How do you pantomime playing musical chairs, or doing instant messaging? My husband had somewhat more luck acting out being a race car driver, and later being a waitress (the latter was quite memorable and will probably continue to generate laughter whenever we remember it).

I had to crab walk around the room with a plastic frog on my belly. There was some question as to whether the frog was still on my belly, as it slid down near my hip, but as I made it around the room, panting with the effort, my husband decided I had accomplished it. On other rounds, we raced around the house collecting items, such as something made only of cotton (a T-shirt), or something with batteries (a remote control). Kyra helped with this category, providing both something alive, and something for a dog to fetch.

Games: The Alien Game

Have you ever played a game and thought the rules didn’t make much sense, or that the premise of the game was weak, and that you could probably come up with a better idea yourself? If so, I can tell you that coming up with a game that works well when you try to play it is not an easy thing.

Al is learning that also. Together we’ve been working on The Alien Game, borrowing ideas from Clue and Where in the U.S. Is Carmen Sandiego?, as well as, of course, his very fertile imagination. It started because he wanted a new game to play, and my stash of games (I pick up inexpensive games when I find them at yard sales, thrift stores, or dollar stores, and save them in my closet until an occasion comes when I think it’s time to bring one out) was depleted.

It’s not that we don’t have games in the house. We have at least four shelves of games downstairs, ranging from little kids games like Candyland to strategy games, party games, and a variety of card games. But Al has outgrown some of the simpler games, and is not ready yet for some of the more advanced ones. Having neither extra money nor a good idea what to get, I suggested making our own game.

I didn’t have anything particular in mind – perhaps some kind of card game where we designed our own cards. Or a simple board game where we tried to get from start to finish, encountering a few obstacles on the way. But Al tackled the project with enthusiasm and much grander aspirations. This game, he decided, would be a space adventure version of Clue, modified so that it would only require two players.

Games: Cornhole

I’ve played this game a few times before, but until today I never knew what it was called. Actually it has several names, but I’ve no idea which - if any of them – were used by people I played with previously. I don’t remember seeing it until a few years ago, and now it seems to be everywhere (well, at least in eastern Iowa), but I don’t know if that’s because it has suddenly become more popular, or because I moved into corn-growing country.

It’s sometimes called Bean Bag or Bean Toss, but the bags aren’t filled with beans, they’re filled with feed corn. They’re tossed at a wooden platform thirty feet away, with the goal being to get the bag into the hole in the platform. A bag in the hole counts three points, one that just lands on the platform counts one point. Points accumulate slowly, though, between well-matched players, because within each round, each player’s points cancel out an equal number of the opponent’s points. So if I score six and you score seven, you net a total of one point for the round.

I hardly ever score six, though. That would mean either two bags in the hole, or one in the hole and the other three (four bags are thrown by each player/team each round) on the platform. Mostly my bags fall off the back or the side of the platform – if they don’t miss altogether.

But it’s a game I can play, because it doesn’t require much in the way of physical coordination. And watching other people play, I can see that my skill (or lack of it) is pretty typical. I think that’s why the game is so popular, because anyone can play it. As the American Cornhole Association website points out

Horseshoes require a sand pit and are hard for the kids to pitch, lawn darts require a lawn and hasn’t been seen since the 70’s, ring toss was made for children and bean bags are for wimps; Cornhole is the game for everyone!

I just finished playing – and losing – in a tournament here at work. The department Fellowship Committee (of which I am a member) has been scheduling lunchtime tournaments about every other month this year, to help people get to know and enjoy doing things with their co-workers. The first three were Wii tournaments, and I didn’t even try. (I was going to try Mario Kart racing, but I watched someone practicing, and just from watching the screen as the track twisted and turned so quickly, my head and stomach informed me that this would not be a good idea.)

At one meeting I suggested some low tech games, like we used to play on Friday Fun afternoons in Michigan. And so the Baggo tournament came about. I hadn’t heard the name Baggo before either; it turns out it’s one company’s version of cornhole, replacing the wooden platform with a plastic one which causes the bags to slide a lot more (the platform slopes down towards the person tossing the bag). Two of the three sets of platforms being used here are wooden, and the third one sure doen’t look like an official Baggo set, but I guess that’s the name that people know the game by around here.

The teams were definitely not evenly matched. Unlike the Wii tournaments, which had qualifying rounds, this one seems to have set up partners and matched teams arbitrarily. One of our opponents clearly is an excellent player. But I didn’t let him skunk us (11 to 0) on the second game; somehow I managed, for three rounds in a row, to outscore him. In the end he and his partner won, 21 to 8, making them the winner of the match.

But my partner and I have another chance next Wednesday, when we face another team that lost today (though not by as much as we did). And I might have to be on the lookout for an inexpensive cornhole set, so I can practice in my back yard.

Movies: Abe and the Amazing Promise

I used to buy every Veggie Tales video as soon as it came out, but disappointment with some of the more recent ones, combined with family financial difficulties, made me reluctant even to spend money renting the newest one. (Well, almost the newest one – I just went to bigidea.com and discovered that Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella just came out but I haven’t seen it in the store yet.)

It occurred to me this weekend, when I picked up Al from his class in the KidzTown area at church, that the KidzTown Public Library just might have Abe and the Amazing Promise. Sure enough, there it was, so I checked it out, and tonight Al and I watched it. He laughed a lot, and commented afterward that its lesson on patience is one he needs to remember. So I have to conclude it’s a good show.

Watching it, though, I couldn’t help thinking that it just wasn’t the same as some of the earlier Veggie Tales shows I enjoyed so much. King George and the Ducky is a family favorite, along with Where Is God When I’m S-Scared? and Are You My Neighbor? I really like Sumo of the Opera, but most of the other recent ones just miss somehow with me.

I’ve read speculation that it has to do with Big Idea having been bought by a larger company. I’ve wondered if the creative minds behind the series have used up their best ideas, and continue to churn out shows because that’s “what they do” even when the inspiration just isn’t there. But I read a customer review at amazon.com that points in a different direction.

Abe and the Amazing Promise is apparently “the first full-length episode directed by John Wahba. … Wahba’s emphasis seems to be more focused on bringing to life a film that plays to a child’s sense of imagination and humor, rather than engaging in the asides and in-jokes for adults that adult fans are used to finding sprinkled throughout the VeggieTales series.” Other reviews commented on the lack of wittiness that Veggie Tales fans have come to expect.

It’s hard to say whether this change in direction will work long-term or not. One reason for Big Idea’s big success was that parents enjoyed watching the videos with their kids. Parents do get movies just for their kids sometimes, but if they’re like me, they’re less likely to stick with a series that they don’t enjoy themselves unless the kids beg for it. And since Veggie Tales isn’t advertised all over the place where kids will see it (at least not where my kid sees it), they won’t even know a new video is out, let alone ask for it.

By the end of the DVD, I have to admit it was beginning to grow on me. Most of the songs – even the silly song – seemed far from memorable, but as I headed up to the kitchen I found the last one running through my head. And the second story (unlike most Veggie Tales videos I can think of, the Bible story came first and a purely fictional story was the longer one) really was quite creative, and I think also effective, in getting its point across (about taking the time to do a job right).

Now I just have to be patient until the church library gets a copy of Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah’s Umbrella…