Have you ever had the experience of buying some fancy new gift for a kid and finding out that they're more interested in the package than the item itself? In spite of how great we think this spiffy new fancy do-dad is, sometimes simpler is better and more interesting.
Paper Dolls have been around forever. They're easy to use, very portable, and there are no batteries required. If you're industrious, you can make them yourself, but there is also help available out there, at places like Printable Paper Dolls. These folks have created several dozen different paper doll designs, with all kinds of interesting clothing and accessories. Browse their site to check out boy paper dolls and girl paper dolls, ballerina paper dolls and princess paper dolls, as well as paper dolls of several other types and descriptions. Many of them are the same size, so it's easy to mix and match outfits between different dolls. And they're all available to download for free.
Printable Paper Dolls are available as PDF files, so you will need a copy of Adobe Reader or another app that can print PDF files.
Ever since Windows 3 came out, folks have had a solitaire game on their computer. Like death and taxes, you could always count on its being there. While the Mac came with its own collection of time wasters—I mean games—there wasn't a good old game of solitaire for you.
McSolitaire puts that problem to an end once and for all. Now instead of missing out on what all your Windows buddies have, you can have your very own deck of electronic cards. No more having to worry about being too productive, as you can fire it up and play a mean game of Klondike whenever the mood strikes you.
As its name hints, McSolitaire is a Mac application. The current version runs under OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later. And if you're behind the curve, there's still an older unsupported version available that will run on just about anything going back as far as 10.1 (Puma).
We all suffer from delusions of grandeur at one time or another. Whether it's that crazy thing your boss did at work or the boo-boo your partner made at home, we all know how to do it better. And those guys in the State House and Washington? Don't get me started. So if you think you can do better, why not give it a shot? No, we don't mean that you should run for political office, or execute a coup d'état. How about playing a game instead?
NationStates will let you create the country of your choosing. Whether it's a workers' paradise or a totalitarian police state, it's all up to you. Pick your country's name and flag, define its style of government—ranging from Sensible to Psychotic—you even get to define the unit of currency and national animal. You'll determine the quality of life for your citizens, and you will interact with other nations—for good or for bad—just like real countries in the real world.
If you've always wanted to drive a race car like a bat out of you-know-where, but are prone to getting car sick, you could have a problem. For you or anybody else with a need for speed but the inability to follow through—whether because of that motion sickness problem or the lack of a major corporate sponsor for your racing team—a racing simulator may be your best friend. TORCS may be just what the doctor—or the mechanic—ordered.
The Open Racing Car Simulator is an open source multi-platform racing simulation. Choose from dozens of different cars, tracks, and opponents. You don't need any special hardware, since you can drive using your keyboard or mouse, as well as a joystick or steering wheel. It turns out that there's a pretty big user community out there as well: you can grab additional cars and tracks from other websites to add to the official offerings.
TORCS is available for Linux, Mac (OS X 10.3.9 ), and Windows platforms.
Have you ever downloaded a deck of cards? Neither have we, but that's all about to change. With SVG-cards, you can do just that. Well, almost at least.
SVG-cards is a huge image that, when you print it out and chop it up, will give you a deck of cards. As the name suggests, this image is in SVG—scalable vector graphics—format. Unlike bitmapped image files, SVG are vector graphics. This means that you can resize them without making them all nasty looking, with jagged pixelation and all. It includes the faces of all the cards of a standard deck of 52 playing cards, as well as a couple of Jokers, and a design for the back as well.
You can choose to print them out as they come onto paper or card stock, or you might scale them down, or up, to make them into a size that works better for you. If you like the designs, you can also do more exotic things like put them on T-shirts as well.
SVG-cards are free to download.
Everybody plays Sudoku, but I can never remember how to spell it. I suppose it's inevitable that variations on this popular game will come into being, and one of the more interesting ones, visually at least, is Crystal Sudoku.
Rather than keeping track of numbers, with Crystal Sudoku, you are tasked with filling grids with images that don't repeat—little "crystals", I suppose. See how quickly you can complete the puzzle, and save your time to compete against yourself. There are four difficulty levels, so you can keep things interesting as you get better and better.
Crystal Sudoku is a Mac application. It's distributed as a Universal Binary, so it's equally at home on either PowerPC or Intel Macs. It requires OS X 10.4 or later.
Okay, the truth is out: we all love Legos! There's always been something very satisfying about the look and feel of those little plastic blocks. From the simplest construction–look, I made a cube!–to complex animated beasts, everything just kinda' looks cool when it's made out of Legos.
In fact, the only real drawback with these little Danish blocks is when you step on them in the middle of the night. There is nothing in the world as sharp as those little plastic corners at 4:30 in the morning when you've just GOT to go.
Logo Digital Designer protects you from that danger, while giving you much of the fun of the Lego experience. Whether using a pre-built model as a starting point, or just starting with a blank screen, you can build just about whatever you want. The Camera Control lets you rotate your virtual model, and to zoom in and out, getting a better view of your handiwork from all angles. You have an unlimited number of bricks, so you'll never run out. Once you're done, you can check the Price Window to see how much your project would cost if constructed with real Lego bricks. Heck, you can even click through to the online store to buy them right now.
Lego Digital Designer is available for Windows (XP) or Mac (OS X 10.3+).
Are you an air guitar aficionado? Do you lust after that sunburst Strat hanging in the music store window? If you've got a computer keyboard, this may be your lucky day.
Frets On Fire is a keyboard-based guitar playing game. Using a combination of Function keys and the the Enter key, you play along with individual notes and chords to rack up a big score. You can start at Easy level to learn the moves; graduate to Medium as you gain confidence, and eventually you'll be at Amazing, shredding with the best of them. There are tons of songs available, or you can import from Guitar Hero, or even create your own songs.
It may not be time to quit your day job yet, but with Frets On Fire, you'll feel like that big recording contract is just around the corner.
Frets On Fire is available for Linux, Mac (x86 processors), and Windows.
The story goes that an early prototype of PONG was set up in a Northern California watering hole and became so popular that people would line up before opening for a chance to play. After a short while, the big console broke down and the bar owner called to have it removed from his establishment. Upon further examination, it was found that the reason that the machine stopped working was because it was too full of quarters. Pretty popular. The folks in line thought that PONG was a good thing, and that it was worth the wait.
Good things indeed come to those who wait. For those of you who have waited since our last review of Plasma Pong for a Mac version, that time has come. Recently released is the OS X port of this mesmerizing game, available for both PPC and x86 machines running 10.4+.
Plasma Pong is PONG with a twist: not content to just move paddles back and forth to bat the "ball" around, players operate in a plasma environment. The game field comes complete with swirling colors and fluid dynamic principles are the order of the day: squirt plasma into the environment, create a vacuum that attracts the ball, and even generate shock waves to keep things interesting.
In addition to the Mac version, there is a new version available for XP and Vista, so there's plenty to go around.
Whether you're a Human or an Alien, you'll enjoy Tremulous, an exciting multi-player first-person shooter that incorporates elements of real-time strategy. Based on Quake 3, the goal in Tremulous, of course, is to wipe out the opposition. This is accomplished not only through killing them, but also by destroying their "spawn structures," effectively keeping them from replenishing their ranks.
Humans advance by receiving credits that allow them to purchase new weapons and upgrade their arsenals, while Alians evolve into new classes of beings, each more powerful than the last. Start as a Dretch and do your job well and you may soon evolve into a Basilisk, Marauder, or Tyrant. The game ends when all players on a team have been killed and all of their buildings have been destroyed.
Tremulous is a free, open source project that is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. With a large support community and an active forum, there is a lot of interest in this exciting, award-winning game.