YOU EVEN HAVE A HOOK FOR A HAND

You know what people should do more often? Have ADVENTURES. Seriously, there should be a surgeon general recommendation for one adventure per year. They keep you from being sedentary and getting fat, because you're too busy running away from rolling boulder traps and climbing up cliffs. Unfortunately most people either don't, or just can't get that adventure in, too busy with jobs or whatever to go spelunking or exploring. Today, I got a game that might fire up that ADVENTURE ENGINE everyone has inside them, and it's called Treasure Adventure Game.

They tell you everything the game has right in the title

At first, you take a look at Treasure Adventure Game and you think "Oh great, another 8-BIT INDIE PLATFORMER" and then you roll your eyes. But this isn't the case! TAG actually has quite a lot to it aside from platforms to jump on. Multiple dungeons to delve, treasures to find, islands to explore, and a whole ocean to sail. TAG has hours worth of content for you to play around with, an impressive feat for a studio (Robit Studios) that's basically one guy, Steven Orlando. It even won an award for "Best Indie Game" back in 2011.

Styx didn't do the soundtrack but they totally could have

Among TAG's neater features are a day night cycle, and NPCs that have their own schedules based around that cycle, a full soundtrack by a dude named Robert Ellis, an upgradeable boat, and boss fights! This game is a complete labor of love, and it shows. There have even been fan translations of it in Dutch, Polish, Brazlian Portuguese, Castilian Spanish, French, German, and Chinese.

Movie adaptation in the works

If any of this is drawing you in, or you just want something to play between ADVENTURES, then Treasure Adventure Game is for you, and you can snag it, and the translations here

Megamad Unlimited Anger

Another, shorter update today because I need to make up for that big stupid gap in updates. Do you like Megaman? No? Get back to work Capcom. For the rest of us just recently a Mega Man fan game was released, after five years of development by a guy who goes by the name "MegaPhilX". Take a look!

Its a full blown new Megaman game, with completely original levels, music, and bosses! On top of all that; it's also SUPER HARD, so you have fun with that! You can jump, shoot, and shoot WHILE JUMPING! What more do you need? What more could you possibly want?

Wait, a lot of things, come to think of it

You can get Megaman Unlimited over here

Hopefully future space wars wont be fought this way

Think about every movie you've seen with dog-fighting in it. No, not the animal abuse kind, the planes kind. There were always wing-men, so it was almost never one guy verses a thousand other planes. But the guys in charge of arcade machines said "Screw that, make it one guy verses infinity dudes, and put it in space.", and so began the consumption of millions of quarters. Fast forward decades later, after the death of arcades as a sustainable business model outside of Japan (if you have sad music play it now), and now you dont need quarters to play those games.

old man not included

Long story short, twelve arcade "space shooter" games have been made available online to play free from your browser, including R-Type and Space Invaders. If you like high scores, space ships, power ups, and blowing up incredibly fragile alien spaceships with an incredibly fragile spaceship of your own, then you should love this.

"One of them looked at me funny! I'M GOING IN HARD!"

You can play all those games here

Running all the way to a psychologist

Something short and sweet here today! It involves running, wild animals, running, hostile plant life, running, floating cash, jumping, human remains just lying around, running, and DEATH. It's called Fear Less.

Did I mention it has running? This is important, because it does

The game is about one girl and her recurring nightmare where she runs through a forest where everything is out to kill her while being pursued by version of the grim reaper that looks like it was spawned forth from the darkest, most foul corners from Deviant Art. That said, the art is nice, having sprites that actually look like they had effort put into it, and having a neat paralax scrolling effect for the foreground and background. One of the game's best aspects however is the music. Very well done, better heard than having me fail to describe it.

START RUNNING

The gameplay itself is about the girl fleeing from death while jumping over hazards and murdering the hateful animals that try to stop her with a sword. But for your first attempt you are like a small baby trying to run from an angry baby sitter. You basically die in one hit, you cant jump worth a damn, and you cant swing your sword to any helpful effect. How do you fix this? While running from death you can snag DREAM COINS, and spend them on upgrades to help you get a little farther each time you try to escape death.

"Oh God there were mushrooms EVERYWHERE"

For a game with cutesy graphics, Fear Less has some pretty dark implications about the mental state of the protagonist, but delving into the themes and artistic message here is for another website, here I'm just telling you its free. If you're into recurring nightmares, fleeing, delaying the inevitable, nonsensical currency, and cutting up cartoon wildlife, then Fear Less is for you.

Cant catch me, Death!

You can play Fear Less here

Kommendant Keen

Got a blast from the past coming at you! (And coincidentally, when you think about it, what really is a blast from the past? A time traveling explosion?  Sounds dangerous, but that’s beside the point). What I got for you today is Commander Keen!

That is a terrible robot design

Developed by id Software and originally released in 1990, the Commander Keen games are side scrolling plat formers with cartoony art and a comedic style to them. What plot there is something similarly simple and silly like “find the parts that were stolen from your spaceship!” or “Save all of the Earth’s major landmarks from aliens!”

Neat looking spaceship

The Commander Keen series has been joked about or referenced in numerous other video games, probably because some of the people who played it when they were kids are developers themselves now. The most notable of which is the “Dopefish”, a enemy from one of the Keen games that has been spotted in numerous other video games over the years, from Quake, to Max Payne, to Hitman, to Warcraft 3, that fish is everywhere.

So now you know where this damn fish comes from

The Commander Keen games were made in a series of trilogies, and in an attempt to get more people to buy the games, the first part of the trilogies were made shareware so people would spread those episodes around and people would get interested in the other episodes, the ones they would have to pay for. If you like platformers, cartoony graphics, or you’re nostalgic for old games, then Commander Keen might be for you.

Star date 36X206, Captains log...

You can get two seperate episodes of Commander Keen here
And you can get some music from the game here

You wish you could punch robots

Continuing the Konjak conflagration today we’ve got a bunch of good stuff, I really should have put it all in one big post rather than try to break it up, oh well. Up first is an action beat em up called Noitu Love.

With 8-bit sounds all over the place

Noitu Love is jam packed with side scrolling fighting, from the start of the game you’re punching the crap out of robots until they explode. Not only that, it has some crazy boss fights as well. Featuring several levels, and a weird plot (involving monkeys?), if you like action and want some free fun, you should give Noitu Love a look. It was good enough that Konjak made a sequel that wasn’t free.

Up next is a puzzle game called Tripwire. A fairly simple puzzle game with thirty levels, where the goal is to draw a line through all of the shapes in the grid, going through them in groups of three. If you like puzzles or brain teasers then its worth a download, if only for a quick time waster.

Cant be any harder than this

Up next we got another side scroller arcade style game called Chalk. In Chalk you use chalk (WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT?) to remove obstacles and destroy enemies. Also featuring multiple levels, a ranking system, and boss fights, Chalk should have atleast a couple of hours of game play for you if you can get into it. Not sure? Have a video of the first level.

Aside from those games, and Legend of Princess, Konjak’s site does have multiple unfinished and abandoned projects to pick through. Such as Iconoclasts and Ivory Springs (which is an earlier version of Iconoclasts), and Mina of the Pirates (Konjak’s first big project). Theres also the music from the games available as separate downloads on the site as well, if you’re into that.

Picture: a maker of video games

Konjak has his own style when it comes to making games, and if you come to like it you should like all of his projects, to some extent.

All of these games are available at http://www.konjak.org/
So go nuts.