Top Hat Sasquatch

‘Tis the season for giving and apparently EA is feeling very generous. All of their games for the iPhone and iPad are on sale for either 99 cents or free. The discount even includes “big ticket” items like Madden NFL 12 for the iPad which regularly sells for $12.99.

I’m looking to pick up a few of their games I don’t have yet, like The Sims 3 and Trenches II. Even though I don’t have an iPad (yet) I’ll probably buy a few of those enhanced apps. I also recommend the very entertaining Spy Mouse HD. The cat-and-mouse puzzle game is a ton of fun. Touch Arcade has an abbreviated list of the EA games included in the holiday sale along with their regular prices for comparison.

If nothing excites you in the EA catalog, try Gameloft. This publisher is also doing a 99 cent sale. They’ve got some good licensed games like Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, James Cameron’s Avatar, Fast Five the Movie: Official Game and Iron Man 2. Once again, we give a tip of the top hat to Touch Arcade for providing a list of all 17 Gameloft games included in the sale.

I think by now it should be obvious to you that we here at Top Hat Sasquatch are huge LEGO fans. Even before the days of licensed sets, LEGO appealed to geeks and non-geeks alike, enabling creative play with endless possibilities. It’s no surprise that the LEGO brand has amassed such a huge cult following that continues to grow every year.

If you read this site and are a big fan of LEGO, you’re probably familiar with John Baichtal and Joe Meno’s work. John writes for the always-awesome blog GeekDad and Joe is the founder of BrickJournal. The Cult of LEGO is the product of their hard work and fanboy dedication to the little plastic bricks from Denmark.
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The 48-hour, rapid game development event known as Ludum Dare is wrapping up its twenty-second event this weekend. Ludum Dare, from the latin phrase “to give a game,” is a video game development competition started by Geoff Howland in 2002. Participants must produce a game from scratch in just two days time. Each entry must come from a single person and tie into the event’s theme. The theme of the most recent competition which ends on Sunday is “Alone.”

Entries can be found on Ludum Dare’s website. There are over 700 submissions in the main competition. You can also follow along with the #LD48 hash tag on Twitter. Contestants come from all walks, from students to professionals. While all entries in the 48-hour event are open source, there’s also a 72-hour “Jam” competition where contestants can keep their source code private. The Jam competition isn’t as strict and even allows team creations.

Minecraft founder Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, made a game called Minicraft. It looks like a NES or Gameboy Advance version of his wildly successful world-building game. Like many of the submissions, you can play his Java-based game online. Others have to be downloaded to be enjoyed.

Another notable entry comes from Shaun Inman who made Sinkhole, a HTML5 game. Inman previously developed the popular iOS game The Last Rocket. Rusty Moyher of Box Cat game fame, made an interesting little game called Audire. It’s a Flash-based game so don’t try playing this one on your iPhone or iPad.

While this is my first brush with Ludum Dare, I’m excited to experience the other submissions and see who will be championed winner. The 48-hour competitions happen three times a year. The next event will be held in April.

Time is running out to order your holiday gifts online so they arrive by Christmas. But, honestly, who are we kidding? This is just an excuse to showcase some cool Nintendo gear you can actually buy for yourself. These picks will serve as a perfect Yuletide diversion.

Nintendo Geek Gift Guide

Celebrate the Mario’s 25th anniversary with the Super Mario All-Stars collection. This single Wii disc brings together Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s a reissue of the All-Stars set made available in 1993 for the NES except with updated graphics and sound. There’s also a CD soundtrack and 32-page book on the history of Super Mario. $50.00 is a small price to pay for some of the best-ever video games.

NES a little too old for you? Try the amazing Supaboy from Hyperkin that shrinks down the Super Nintendo Entertainment System console to the size of a controller. It features a 3.5-inch LCD screen and rechargeable battery for hours of mobile game play. Even better, you can hook it up to a TV and connect two SNES controllers for big-screen play. Alas, it doesn’t come with any cartridge but you can take your pick in the game section of many used media retailers. Supaboy is a steal at just $100.

Need some quiet time around the holiday? Try Jeff Ryan’s book Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. Get the history of Japan’s biggest game company and it’s U.S. invasion. We even discussed it on an episode of our podcast.

Apples to Apples has come pretty far since it first got published in 1999. It’s currently the (give or take) third best selling board game on Amazon, and you can’t go to a department store without seeing the red boxes overflowing from the shelves, especially around the holidays. Well, the Apples to Apples empire just grew even larger, because now you can buy it on Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s a pretty nice digital version of the game.
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